The history of the arts is strewn with unhappy tales of creative spirits who struggled to achieve something new and fine, reached their goals, were unappreciated in their lifetimes, died young and were hailed for their greatness when they were no longer around to enjoy their success. No one exemplifies such a fate better than Georges Bizet, the composer of what has become one of the most beloved pieces of music ever written. Born to musical parents in Paris on 25 October 1838, by the age of four Bizet could read both words and music. A literary bent that he demonstrated later in childhood worried his parents, who hid the books that he was reading so that he would concentrate on his musical studies. His piano teacher was the celebrated virtuoso Antoine-François Marmontel, and Charles Gounod, the composer of Faust, was one of his professors of composition at the Paris Conservatoire, which he entered at the exceptionally early age of ten. When Bizet was 16, Jacques Halévy, the composer of La Juive, described him as "a great musician", and the following year the prodigious youngster wrote his Symphony in C, which, since its discovery and première in 1935, has become a staple of the concert repertoire. As a result of having won the Conservatoire's coveted Prix de Rome in 1857, Bizet was able to spend three years in residence at the French Academy's Roman headquarters, the Villa Medici. There he developed a lifelong love of Mediterranean climes and cultures, but he also contracted the chronic throat infection that eventually claimed his life, and he began to suffer attacks of acute depression and artistic self-doubt. According to his biographer Winton Dean, Bizet "divided genius into two types: the rational, which has to cudgel its material into shape, and in whose success this sense of struggle plays an essential part (Michelangelo, Beethoven and Meyerbeer), and the natural, which expresses itself without any apparent interference from the will (Raphael, Mozart and Rossini). Bizet confessed that his sympathies were with the latter, and there is no doubt that all his best work was done when he reacted instinctively to a stimulus and did not force his creative gift; but he seems to have been ashamed of the fact." While in Rome, Bizet wrote Don Procopio, an Italian-style comic opera, but in the years following his return to Paris his self-doubts led him to begin and then abandon a series of musical projects. Les Pêcheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers), a three-act opera (1863), gave Bizet the only relatively warm critical reception he would ever know. In 1869 he married the 20-year-old Geneviève Halévy, the composer's mentally unstable daughter. Their marriage, which produced one son (Bizet had previously had a son by his parents' maid), was not a happy one. (His wife survived him by more than 50 years; their son eventually committed suicide.) During 1872, Bizet's one-act comic opera, Djamileh, and his incidental music for Alphonse Daudet's L'Arlésienne were given their first performances, but he completed no other works of importance before Carmen, his masterpiece, which was a failure at its premiere on 3 March 1875. His health shattered, Bizet took his family to Bougival, in the country near Paris, and there he died on 3 June 1875, at the age of 36. On the night of his funeral, there was a special performance of Carmen, which, according to all reports, was almost unbearably moving. The press that had condemned the opera three months earlier now proclaimed Bizet a master.

Harvey Sachs

Biographical notes (c) 1996, by permission of Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg

A selection of major works:

Orchestral: Jeux d'enfants (Children's Games; orig. for 2 pianos), Overture "La Patrie", Symphony in C

Chamber: Jeux d'enfants (2 pianos) Instrumental solo: Various piano works

Vocal/Choral: Mélodies (Songs)

Stage works:

Incidental music: L'Arlésienne

Operas: Carmen, Djamileh, Don Procopio, La jolie fille de Perth, Le Pêcheurs de perles