Bizet and his world

Resource Information

The work Bizet and his world represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Portland Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Bizet and his world

Statement of responsibility

by Mina Curtiss

Creator

• Curtiss, Mina Kirstein, 1896-1985

Subject

• Bizet, Georges, 1838-1875
• Bizet, Georges, 1838-1875
• Composers -- France -- 19th century -- Biography
• Bizet, Georges, 1838-1875
• Music
• Music -- France | Paris
• France -- Paris

Genre

• Biography

Language

eng

Summary

This magnificent full-length life of Georges Bizet (the first ever written with all the documents at hand) presents a very rich picture of cultural and daily life in the Paris that witnessed the arrival and departure of the Second Empire, the Commune, the Franco-Prussian War, and the siege by the Prussians, as well as the dawn of the Third Republic. Its scope and cast of characters are both large - the latter encompassing not only all the foremost European musicians of the era, including Berlioz, Rossini, and Wagner, but also Delacroix, Napoleon II and Eugenie, Thiers, Gautier, Dumas fils, and a host of colorful secondary actors. Life at the Paris Conservatoire and at the French Academy in Rome; life in the managers' offices and on the stages of the Paris theaters and opera houses; the fantastic career of Celeste Mogador, courtesan, actress, and impresario, who married a count and wrote her memoirs in phonetic French; the extraordinary lives of the Halevy family, into which Bizet married; his warm friendship with Alphonse Daudet; Paris under siege after Sedan; the writing not only of Carmen, but also of Les Pecheurs de Perles, La Jolie Fille de Perth and L'Arlesienne; the demanding, steadfast character of the first Carmen, Celestine Galli-Marie - these and hundreds of other pages of fascinating re-creation make this book unique. It was while working on her translation of Marcel Proust's letters that the author became keenly interested in Bizet - whose remarried widow, Mme Emile Strauss, was Proust's friend and in part his model for the Duchesse de Guermantes. She has had access to all the relevant documents, many of which she has purchased or catalogued. She has been able to quote certain of Gounod's letters for the first time and she has the consent of the descendants of Bizet's illegitimate son to publish hitherto unknown information about his family. Not primarily a book about music, this is the life-like portrait of a musician whose creations are familiar around the world, but who has himself been incompletely or vaguely known. As much the evocation of an era as the biography of a fascinating man, this book offers rewards alike for music-lovers and for those who enjoy being plunged deeply into a man's life in a glamorous world that as fully alive, but is now gone beyond recall

Biography type

individual biography

Cataloging source

DLC

Illustrations

• illustrations
• portraits
• plates
• facsimiles

Index

index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography