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Melodic Gold
Bizet's 'The Pearlfishers' live in HD from New York,
enjoyed by MARIA NOCKIN
Georges Bizet (1838-1875) won the much-coveted Prix de Rome in 1857 and it established his reputation as a promising young composer. However, the work he produced the following year, a Te Deum, did not live up to expectations, and he became convinced that he was better off writing for the theater than the Church even though it was difficult to get works staged in Paris.
In 1862, retiring Minister of Fine Arts Alexandre Colonna, Count Walewski, promised the manager of the independent Théâtre Lyrique, Léon Carvalho, an annual grant of one hundred thousand francs if he would stage a new work opera by a recent Prix de Rome winner each year. Carvalho had a high opinion of Bizet's abilities, and asked him to write a three act opera using the libretto of Les pêcheurs de perles, an exotic story by Michel Carré and Eugène Cormon set on the island of Ceylon, now called Sri Lanka...
Copyright © 25 January 2016
Maria Nockin,
Arizona, USA
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