Carmen, a Gypsy Geography

CHAPTER TWO Georges Bizet and the Genealogy of Carmen

Bizet and the Genealogy of Carmen [33] Georges Bizet Alexander César Léopold Bizet was born at Bougival, outside Paris, on 25 October 1838, his parents’only child.4 Bizet, a bonhomme who called himself “Georges,”was a private man who sought solitude as often as he attended soirées where he played the piano for his friends. He became a respected pianist and, had he not loved composing more, might have pursued a concert career. Blessed with a remarkable memory for music, he could recall entire scores with ease. He read widely and was known to speak his mind. Bizet was enthusiastic about other people’s musical ideas, absorbing distinct genres of music into his own musical inventions. In music he found his spiritual and philosophical center.5 His father, Adolphe Armand Bizet (1810–1886), was from Rouen and had worked in Paris as a wigmaker and hairdresser before becoming a singing teacher who coached opera singers. Georges Bizet’s mother, Aimée Joséphine Delsarte (1815–1861), a very fine pianist, came from Cambrai in northern France. Originally from a religious Catholic family of musicians, Aimée moved to Paris to be near her brother, François, the celebrated singing teacher and musical reformer. Adolphe and Aimée married and went to live in northern Paris, near the six Delsarte cousins with whom Georges spent his childhood. It is thought that Aimée, not Adolphe, taught Georges to read music and play the piano. Following in his mother’s footsteps, Georges also became interested in his uncle François’s ideas. At eight years old, Georges could sing a song having only heard it once before and without looking at the music. François Delsarte’s (1811–1871) reformist musical principles, to which Bizet was exposed at a young age, arguably influenced his scores and the way in which he integrated stage directions, choreography, and musical notation, particularly into the orchestral score of Carmen.6 Delsarte, a St.-Simonian and a teacher of rhetorical gesture, “devised an elaborate system linking life (vitality, emotions), mind and soul in a triune scheme that was applied to the parts of the body, the way the body parts combine in movement and the directions movements proceed in space.”7 Delsarte espoused the notion that all parts of the body were musical and, therefore, expressive.8 In France, one had to attend the Paris Conservatoire to become a professional musician. It was the center of training where young performers and composers made the necessary connections that would launch their professional career. Bizet was only nine years old when his father enrolled him on 9 October 1848.9 Ten years later, Bizet graduated from the Conservatoire a virtuoso pianist and entered the professional compositional arena. [34] Carmen, a Gypsy Geography A bibliophile, Bizet attracted the attention of the finest teachers. He was already an exceptional pianist, with perfect pitch and at ease with harmony and counterpoint, when he auditioned for the Conservatoire. Piano was his anchor, and he began his music studies in Marmontel’s class and won a premier prix for solfège within six months.10 He won a deuxième prix in 1851 and a premier prix in 1852.11 That same year, Bizet signed up for Benoist’s organ class. Two years later, he won deuxième prix for organ and fugue and, in 1855, a premier prix for both. It is important to note that a number of Bizet’s teachers at the Conservatoire composed ballet music with Gypsy themes. Benoist collaborated on the score for La Gypsy in 1839 and Auber, the Director of the Conservatoire, composed a similarly titled ballet, La Gitana, performed at the end of 1839. Bizet supplemented his keyboard studies with counterpoint, which he studied with Piěrre Zimmerman (1785–1853) and Charles Gounod (1818–1893), who substituted for Zimmerman when he became ill.12 Gounod had a formative influence on Bizet, who once said to him, “You were the beginning of my life as an artist. I spring from you.”13 He then began to study composition with the distinguished artist Jacques François Fromental Halévy (1799–1862), who had written the popular opera La Juive.14 Halévy composed a great deal both in lyric and grand opera, working at the Paris Opéra and the Opéra-Comique. In 1854, Halévy was appointed Permanent Secretary of...