Georges Bizet Biography
(French Composer Best Known for His Opera ‘Carmen’)
Birthday: October 25, 1838 (Scorpio)
Born In: Paris, France
Georges Bizet was a Romantic era French composer best known for his final work, ‘Carmen,’ an opera in four acts. Trained at the Paris Conservatoire under well-known teachers like Antoine François Marmontel, Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume Zimmermann, Charles Gounod and Fromental Halévy, he won the prestigious Prix de Rome at the age of nineteen. Thereafter, he spent three years in Rome before returning to Paris, where he spent the rest of his short life, composing music. Although he was a great pianist, he hardly ever performed in public and spent his time and energy on composing marvelous pieces. Unfortunately, very few of them received attention during his lifetime and many of the manuscripts were lost in the intervening years. It was only from the end of the nineteenth century that his works started being rediscovered or revived. However, their true worth started being recognized only from the early twentieth century. Today he has been acclaimed as a brilliant composer, whose early death was a tremendous loss to French music.