Bizet: Farandole
Composer Georges Bizet (1838-1875)
If you’ve been to see an opera in the last decade or so, chances are pretty decent that it was Georges Bizet’s Carmen, which – along with a couple by Verdi and Puccini – is perennially among the most-staged in the world. But Bizet himself never got to reap the fruits of that glory, though, as it was his untimely death at the age of 37, three months after Carmen’s unsuccessful premiere, that spurred a second look at that work and guaranteed his immortality.
In life, Bizet’s career was a curious one. Admitted to the Paris Conservatory at the ripe old age of nine, Bizet shot like a comet through the halls of that institution, winning more accolades as a student than almost anyone before or since. A Prix de Rome victory – which came with five years’ worth of generous financial support – seemed to launch him into the professional world before age 20, and he even managed to wed his composition professor’s lovely daughter. But the composer and the musical world could never quite seem to get on the same page, and Bizet spent 15 years as a sort of musical odd-jobs man, with opera projects falling through at the last moment and accompanying and arranging jobs paying the bills.
Among those musical odd jobs was the composition of incidental music for a new play, a tragicomedy called L’Arlesienne, in 1872. The play was something of a flop, but Bizet was able to extract some of his music and convert it into suites for performance on the concert stage, and the Farandole on tonight’s program closes the Second Suite. The Farandole borrows its main theme from a medieval French Christmas carol, and has long been a favorite at Holiday-season pops concerts for decades.
See a performance
Hear Farandole
Chris Vaneman is the Director of the Petrie School of Music and Associate Professor of Flute at Converse College. Chris frequently leads the Spartanburg Philharmonic pre-concert lecture series “Classical Conversations,” and occasionally performs as a substitute flutist in the orchestra.