Bizet was born in Paris the son of an amateur singer and composer. He entered the Paris Conservatory of Music in 1848, a fortnight before his tenth birthday. His teachers there were Pierre Zimmermann (fugue and counterpoint; often assisted by his son-in-law Charles Gounod), Antoine Francois Marmontel (piano), Francois Benoist (organ) and, on Zimmermann's death, Fromental Halevy, whose daughter Bizet later married. He won first prizes for organ and fugue in 1855, and he completed his earliest compositions there. In 1857, a setting of the one-act operetta Le docteur Miracle won him a share in a prize offered by Jacques Offenbach. He also won the music composition scholarship of the Prix de Rome, the conditions of which required him to study in Rome for three years. There, his talent developed as he wrote such works as the opera buffa Don Procopio (1858-59). Apart from this period in Rome, Bizet lived in the Paris area all his life. Carmen (1875) is Bizet's best-known work and is based on a novella of the same title written in 1846 by the French writer Prosper Merimee. Bizet composed the title role for a mezzo-soprano. It was substantially composed during the summer of 1873, but not finished until the end of 1874, during which time his marriage came under severe strain and he separated from his wife for two months. Carmen premiered on March 3, 1875, at the Opera-Comique in Paris, and was not initially well-received, although it ran for 37 performances in the next three months, an average of three a week. Bizet had put every ounce of his genius into Carmen, and its lukewarm reception was a bitter disappointment. Praise for it eventually came from well-known contemporaries including Debussy, Saint-Saens and Tchaikovsky. Brahms attended over twenty performances of it, and considered it the greatest opera produced in Europe since the Franco-Prussian War. The views of these composers proved to be prophetic, as Carmen has since become one of the most popular works in the entire operatic repertoire. Carmen contains two of Bizet's most famous songs, the "Habanera" and "The Toreador's Song", which compete for popularity with the tenor-baritone duet "Au fond du temple saint" ("In the depths of the temple") from The Pearl Fishers. However, Bizet did not live to see Carmen's success. He died on his sixth wedding anniversary, exactly three months after Carmen's first performance. His death came just when he had found his mature style. Carmen was then immediately dropped by the Opera-Comique. Yet within three years, it had made its way to Vienna, Brussels, London, New York City, and soon to Germany and Russia, also. Five years later, Carmen returned to Paris, where it was received rapturously and launched on its long-running success. Today it is one of the world's best-loved operas. The Carmen suites for orchestra were arranged by Fritz Hoffmann

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