He worked on it during 1873-4, and its première took place at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in March of 1875. After all the failures, disappointments, and false starts, Bizet hit pay dirt with this one. It clearly is one of the greatest operas of the nineteenth century, and takes a place of honor among all in the genre. Moreover, to survive financially, he was reduced to spending much of his musical life arranging the music of other composers.īut there is Carmen.
While he did compose a substantial body of work, it was admittedly irregular in quality-certainly in reception. The situation is only somewhat better in Europe-even in his native France. Today, the American musical public knows his work almost entirely through his immortal opera Carmen, and to a lesser degree, the opera The Pearl Fishers, as well as his orchestral suites of incidental music from the play, L’Arlésienne. His musical legacy was a story of lost manuscripts, poor or no scholarly attention, bad editions, and general neglect. He planned, started, or substantially worked on some thirty operas, but finished only about five, of which only two achieved success. And yet-his career was a checkered one, full of missteps, works that were never finished, works that were finished and not performed, betrayals and failures with the French operatic establishment, and an early death. Georges Bizet was a genuine musical prodigy, whose talent was early and widely recognized, who studied with the best teachers and composers in France, who perhaps was the close equal of Liszt as a pianist, who won the Prix de Rome, and who composed perhaps the most popular opera of all time.
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