'S TRAGIC SON Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article-abstract/XLIX/4/357/1068074 by University of Manchester user on 16 August 2019

BY JOHN W. KLEIN

"BIZET'S child is of an ideal charm and beauty", Georg Brandes, the Danish historian, wrote in 1888 to Nietzsche, the most fervent champion of '', which he had frequently acclaimed as the greatest of modern . The stern Brandes himself was entranced by this lovable child, his pathetic, captivating mother and his ill-fated father, whose genius had been recognized only after his death. To Brandes, though a thoroughgoing sceptic, they formed a kind of mystic, intensely beautiful trinity. Abjectly he apologized to Nietzsche for admiring 'Tristan' as well; but, con- descendingly, the philosopher reassured him on that score. Jacques Bizet (christened after his grandfather, Jacques Fro- mental HaleVy, the composer of'La Juive') was born on 10 July 1872. "Thanks to you", Bizet wrote to Dr. Devillieres, the most noted obstetrician of the day, "my wife has come victoriously through an ordeal we both feared. I shall never forget that night or the part you played in it". Genevieve Bizet had in fact been on the very brink of insanity, and her husband was tortured by a gnawing dread. Besides, 1872 proved an unsuccessful and frustrating year for him. In May his delicate one-act 'Djamileh' had failed; to the obtuse critics it seemed to outdo even Wagner in its frantic striving after originality. Then, three months after his son's birth, 'L'Arle'sienne', about which once said: "Seldom has more been expressed in fewer notes", met with a hostile reception. The pleasure-loving audience, at the Vaudeville Theatre, unaccus- tomed to such sombre fare, resented not merely the grim scene of the hero's suicide but the very presence of serious music. Flinging aside the last remnant of self-control, the composer had shaken his fist at the boorishly unappreciative public, exclaiming several times: "They have not understood me!" For a while his courage and resolution enabled him to continue the struggle; but on 3 March 1875 the disastrous premiere of 'Carmen' struck him with the staggering force of a cruel and almost unpredictable blow. Never did he recover entirely from this stark disillusionment; and his last three months, with their violent outbursts, have a sinister tinge of despair and even of persecution mania. When his father died Jacques was not yet three years old. That sudden death ("the most horrible catastrophe", wrote Ludovic Hal6vy) occurred a mere two days after a reckless swim which the novelist Maurice Sachs, a grandson of Jacques' second wife, bluntly

357 described in his 'La Decade de Pillusion' (published in 1936) as "suicide", though in all probability it was merely a final, despairing attempt to revive a flagging energy. Jacques himself was brought up very erratically by his lovely but neurotic mother, whose frequent tantrums alternated disconcertingly with interludes of a bewitching Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article-abstract/XLIX/4/357/1068074 by University of Manchester user on 16 August 2019 sweetness. To appreciate her charm one glance at her famous portrait in the Louvre is sufficient. It is Elie Delaunay's finest work; here Genevieve gazes pensively at us with her large, dark, melancholy eyes—"like black stars", as Abel Hermant aptly termed them. Her husband's infatuation is easily understandable, no less than that of Proust, Maupassant and countless others. Indeed, none of Bizet's biographers has fully realized her enchantment or the significant part she played in the social life of her time. Her son Jacques inherited both her fascination and her mental instability, no less than his father's insatiable thirst for ever new experiences. Even at school, however, he constituted a problem, for the teachers scarcely dared to punish the son of so eminent and tragic a man. "With a famous name like yours, you'll never be expelled", the school superintendent told him. Even that stern Wagnerite, Adolphe Jullien, incidentally no admirer of the composer of 'Carmen', informs us that in the 1880's "the. whole of France inebriated itself with the very name of Bizet". An exceptionally precocious and high-spirited lad, Jacques from the outset seemed to justify the highest expectations. One rare gift was his: the discern- ment to discover talent, even in its most fumbling beginnings. At school he immediately took charge of an awkward, unhappy lad who was subjected to relentless bullying; luring him out of his self- imposed solitude, he introduced him into society and formed a lifelong friendship with him. This was , destined to become the most subtle psychological novelist of his century. What drew them together was, above all, a fervent passion for music, according to Proust, "the most compelling of all the arts" and the chief consolation of "my bleak existence". Jacques and his mother wisely rescued him from what might so easily have developed into a total withdrawal from ordinary life. The youthful Bizet's most endearing characteristic was his devotion to his father's memory. Moreover, his physical likeness to him, according to many good judges, was uncanny. He loved his father's works (to which his mother revealed a strange indifference) and attended every performance of 'Carmen' in which a new artist appeared; his favourite singer was Mary Garden, who died in 1967 at the advanced age of 92. Invariably, before he fell asleep, his eyes would linger for a while upon a magnificent painting of Georges Bizet: young, debonair, full of imperturbable confidence in his glorious future. One can almost catch the sound of his voice as he refers to his chief rivals, Verdi and Wagner: "I have nothing to fear from those who are finishing their careers". Poor Bizet: Wagner

358 produced 'Parsifal' seven years after his early death. As for Verdi, that superb sunset lay more than a decade ahead. So much for human hopes and predictions. But his tragic fate stirred his son's vivid imagination, as it did that of Nietzsche and Tchaikovsky. "La gloire, soleil des morts", Balzac Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article-abstract/XLIX/4/357/1068074 by University of Manchester user on 16 August 2019 had sadly meditated. The father Jacques had never really known grew into a legendary figure. He could not forget that the great German philosopher, in an extraordinary panegyric, had placed him above Wagner himself; for, as he exclaimed, "everything divine runs on light feet". In 'Carmen' alone he had found oblivion of sorrow, disease and impending insanity. Even the cynical and caustic Proust, in an amazing outburst, asserted that the perfection of 'L'Arl6sienne' was such that it made authors and composers alike realize the futility of writing. "No work of art inflicts such incurable wounds", was his mysterious comment as he pondered every word and note. A dynamo of energy, Jacques resolved to try his hand at one profession after the other. No man, he was convinced, could foresee, at any rate at the outset of his career, where his innate ability lay. Even his father had vacillated between music and literature. At first it was in fact music that tempted Jacques; then he made up his mind to become a man of science; for two years he studied medicine at the University of . Afterwards, impulsively, he took up journalism; he became co-editor with Proust and Daniel Halevy of one of the strangest literary magazines ever published, Le Banquet; its very title, inspired by Plato's 'Symposium', was intended as a tribute to Mallarme". Discerningly the new magazine dealt with pioneers such as Ibsen and Strindberg but above all Nietzsche, the earliest trans- lations from whose works appeared in Le Banquet in 1892. In the youthful Bizet's attic, half-studio and half-laboratory, the intellectual 61ite of France gathered. Here fulminated , subse- quently the author of the most savage indictment of war, 'Le Feu'. Here, too, was the more sophisticated Le"on Blum, future Prime Minister of France. Unfortunately, acrimonious disputes raged among the contributors of the magazine; Proust even believed that an article by Blum "dishonoured Le Banquet". In such cir- cumstances its circulation dwindled. In March 1893 its last number appeared, accompanied by a sanguine promise of future articles. Then, abruptly, it vanished for ever, without even a word of ex- planation. But Jacques, who had been chiefly instrumental in keeping this "review of youth" alive, did not despair; cheerfully he now embarked on a dramatic career. He wrote gay little plays and burlesques scintillating with petulant wit, and inhabiting a rather quaint domain half-way between Marivaux and Oscar Wilde. Though he shied away from serious drama, he often gave the impression of being as downright and single-minded as his father. Henry Malherbe,

359 the director of the Ope"ra-Comique, who knew him well and accom- panied him on many an excursion, once exclaimed: "There, standing in front of me, in all his sturdy independence, was, I imagined, Georges Bizet himself". Yet somewhere a fatal flaw

existed. Despite his tireless activity Jacques lacked consistency of Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article-abstract/XLIX/4/357/1068074 by University of Manchester user on 16 August 2019 purpose. Nevertheless, he remained almost morbidly conscious of his great heritage. No doubt his father had triumphed after his death; yet he still needed support, for the very work which in its time had been denounced as revolutionary, "more chaotic than the worst excesses of Wagner", was now in danger of being belittled as a commonplace potboiler. Soon people began to shrug their shoulders disdainfully; at the Opera-Comique the orchestra played with an irritating listlessness; such dull routine performances it has rarely been my misfortune to endure anywhere. In fact, Bizet was being literally played to death. Realizing this almost inevitable reaction, Jacques, with the discernment which seldom deserted him, made up his mind to approach the most cultured French music critic of his age, Romain Rolland, a man impervious to the whims and follies of fashion. He knew that Rolland was the only eminent scholar capable of doing complete justice to his father's genius. The intrepid champion of the heroic in both art and life, Rolland himself once told me that, in its true greatness, he had encountered it only in Mahatma Gandhi and in Beethoven. In the music and literature of contemporary France it seemed to him to be dismally lacking; Debussy and Ravel were no doubt delicately and hauntingly beautiful, but they lacked power. Twice, however, with startling clarity, an elemental vigour had emerged in French music: in Berlioz and Bizet. They alone "embodied heroic action, the intoxication of reason and laughter, the passion for light". Here, then, was the ideal biographer, one who combined erudition and enthusiasm and who, moreover, had noticed the most obvious quality in Bizet—his strength, whereas most critics could see only his jewelled craftsmanship. Besides, Jacques was convinced of his own remarkable ability to persuade and to cajole. Yet he had waited, alas, too long. When in 1908 he made his final appeal to the overworked Rolland, the latter had already relinquished music for semi-autobiographical fiction: the ten-volume 'Jean-Christophe' (the story of a composer of genius) held him spellbound. To this vast work he devoted a whole decade of indefatigable labour; it was to constitute the basis of his world-fame. Consequently, he answered evasively; usually the frankest and most outspoken of men, he strove rather unconvincingly to explain his reluctance to assume a task he alone could have performed satisfactorily. His days, he assured Jacques, were too short to permit him to grapple with all the duties which threatened to engulf him. "It is my intention, later on", he wrote, "to do a full study of all the works and the life of your father. But for the time being I could only

360 write something hasty and mediocre, and that is just what I do not want to do, particularly on such a subject". "On such a subject". The note of enthusiasm is unmistakable. And yet never did Rolland fulfil that promise. When I visited him as late as 1934, I was greatly impressed not merely by his personality but by his extraordinary Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article-abstract/XLIX/4/357/1068074 by University of Manchester user on 16 August 2019 political acumen and foresight, yet at the same time a little taken aback by his almost feverish obsession with Beethoven, who seemed to dominate his every thought, to the exclusion of all other artists, composers and poets alike. That, probably, is why he abandoned the project of a book on Bizet. But who else could have written it with such zest? Biased and unimaginative journalists now took advantage of his enigmatic silence to misrepresent Bizet as a servile imitator of Gounod and Ambroise Thomas, bent on pandering to the unmusical patrons of commercial opera. Profoundly disheartened by Rolland's negative attitude, Jacques Bizet foresaw that the inspiring biography of his father by a dis- tinguished French author would never materialize. Though a great admirer of Rolland, with a keen realization of the difficulties he would no doubt have encountered, I find it hard to forgive him for what, in Dante's words, might almost be stigmatized as "il gran rifiuto". For nobody, apart from Nietzsche, had expressed his admiration for Bizet with such inspired eloquence. Perhaps, in a sense, his inactivity was partly responsible for the savagely denun- ciatory, self-styled "e"tude critique" by Henry Gauthier-Villars, which followed three years later, in 1911, and left no stone unturned to damage Bizet's reputation and character. Gauthier-Villars (the first husband of Colette) at that time happened to be one of the most popular and influential of critics. Explain it who can. His work, however, impressed numerous French and British musicologists with relatively little insight into the cynical and dis- illusioned France which was the dismal result of the disasters of the Franco-Prussian war. This topsy-turvy biography remains indeed the most extraordinary and distasteful example of grotesquely prejudiced criticism in existence. Justifiably Winton Dean, who has proved that Bizet's artistic integrity can stand up to a good deal of relentless probing, condemns "this acid study, hitherto accepted as the standard for modern purposes, but so biased as to be valueless as criticism", adding caustically that, "by its manipulation and omission of important facts, it almost qualifies as a masterpiece of misrepresen- tation". What can have induced Gauthier-Villars to concoct such a travesty of a biography ? Possibly a secret urge to please Debussy, whom he succeeded merely in outraging, for the creator of 'Pelle'as' was no less proud of Bizet as a "great French composer" than the master's own son. "Ah, to have written 'Carmen' ", he murmured nostalgically. He maintained that after Bizet's untimely death French music was like "a pretty widow who is too weak to take care of her- self and falls into the hands of strangers who maltreat her". In- 361 cidentally, no Debussy biographer has even remotely hinted at his strange obsession with Bizet, whom, like Delius and Stravinsky, he regarded as a greater musician than Berlioz. More perceptively than Rolland, Jacques grasped what ought to have been one of the critic's major tasks: to extol eminent French Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article-abstract/XLIX/4/357/1068074 by University of Manchester user on 16 August 2019 composers, whom he never wearied of maintaining were disgrace- fully underrated by their compatriots. Perhaps, instead of yet another volume on Beethoven, Rolland, with his unique insight into the workings of a great artist's mind, could have concentrated a little more fully upon the music of his own country. In France he was harshly criticized for his lofty international ideals; a more justifiable stricture would have been his almost exclusive devotion to the art of another land. Mediocrities, or even enemies, wrote the lives of France's greatest composers, while he himself, perhaps too often, carried coals to Newcastle. Forsaken by Rolland, Jacques found little spiritual comfort in his mother, who had married a wealthy lawyer, Emile Straus. "I hope it won't disgust you", Brandes wrote to Nietzsche, "but like Mozart's widow, and Napoleon's, she has not remained faithful to her god". Unexpectedly, after emerging from the solitude of widowhood, she then proceeded to create one of the most successful and famous salons of her age. Marcel Proust, more than 20 years her junior, was completely captivated: in his works he depicted her as the capricious but enchanting Duchesse de Guermantes and borrowed many a quaint witticism from her scintillating conversation. Shortly before his own death, more than 30 years after their first meeting, he inscribed her name in a copy of 'Swann's Way': "Madame Emile Straus, the only thing of beauty I loved even in the days of this book's beginning, for whom my admiration has changed as little as her own loveliness, perpetually renewed as it is by her charm". No great writer has ever paid so glowing a tribute to a 70-year-old woman. Unfortunately, she was far less successful as a wife and mother than as an ornament of society and an inspirer of genius. Scarcely less gay and fascinating, Jacques still teemed with ideas. Music, painting, literature and medicine were now flung aside; to him the real splendour of the universe seemed to be embodied in a new thrill: the beauty of speed. An intrepid motorist, he was largely responsible for the creation of Zebre, the first small French car, which proved invaluable in the 1914 war. He was also the founder of Unic, the first garage in France to let cars for hire. But such relatively prosaic activities could never delude him that he was emulating his revered father. Constantly he hankered after the theatre; at one time he was nominated secretary of an important commission appointed by the Ministry of Fine Arts. Yet, though in such a capacity he did useful work, it could not satisfy his yearning for new and varied experiences. Like his father, but with a more pathological intensity, he was extremely susceptible to the charm of

362 women. Alas, he did not possess the vital safety-valve of artistic creation. His life, which had started so auspiciously, gradually distin- tegrated. His first wife, Madeleine Breguet, like his mother famous for her beauty, died tragically at an early age; his second, Alice Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article-abstract/XLIX/4/357/1068074 by University of Manchester user on 16 August 2019 Frankel, he had divorced. His own subsequent escapades—for he was a splendid, turbulent eccentric, as touchy as Georges Bizet himself— let to mounting frustration. Often he resembled one of his father's heroes bewitched by some imperious coquette. A man of great physical courage, he would indulge in hair-raising proofs of athletic prowess to satisfy their caprices. Till the end he retained the im- pressive stature, no less than an almost Oscar Wildian aptitude for repartee, which in Georges Bizet captivated even the critical Saint- Saens, who had ranked him above any contemporary as a uniquely stimulating conversationalist. At last, at the age of 50, Jacques had eventually reached the sombre conclusion that for him life had lost its savour. He, so avid of publicity, now shunned it. Like a greater than himself, Modeste Moussorgsky, who in spirit and artistic endeavour was in some respects akin to Bizet, he ended by becoming a confirmed hypo- chondriac and drunkard. True, Moussorgsky could claim the excuse of being humiliated and degraded by unimaginable poverty; but Jacques suffered from a sense of artistic inadequacy scarcely less torturing. Overshadowed by an illustrious father who had left him only his fame, he had also been pampered and idolized by a way- ward and doting mother. Perhaps, almost compulsively, he drifted along the slippery path which so often leads to degeneracy and despair. Yet all the same he was a more complex and fascinating figure than, let us say, Wagner's pedestrian if single-minded son, Siegfried; for in Parisian circles his charm, generosity and impulsive daring remained proverbial. Self-delusion, however, was not among his foibles: he knew only too well that he could no longer write or, in youthful exuberance, elaborate new schemes, or even dazzle society. For years, in grim moods, he had contemplated suicide. Why, when it had become unendurable, should any man put up with life ? The sole fool-proof means of accomplishing such a purpose, he would proclaim aggressively, was a bullet in the mouth: "It's clean, and you don't feel a thing". These strange words may have echoed in the morbid brain of one who had nothing in common with him except a veneration for his father. This was Adolf Hitler, who, unlike his victims of the July plot, committed suicide in precisely this unorthodox fashion. Though one should be wary of jumping to conclusions, such a theory is, to a certain extent, corroborated by Maurice Sachs's detailed and revealing reminiscences, curiously ignored by all Bizet's biographers. During the last war this erratic but brilliant author, so closely linked with Jacques, spent two years in German custody; despite his Jewish ancestry, he was allowed to

363 devote himself almost entirely to his literary, mostly autobiographical work. No doubt during those cruel years his relationship to the Bizet family stood him in good stead, as it did Jacques' cousin and former schoolmate, Daniel Halevy. Sachs's amazing record of a tortured existence (one of the most extraordinary documents of our time), Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article-abstract/XLIX/4/357/1068074 by University of Manchester user on 16 August 2019 'Le Sabbat', first published in 1946 and since then translated no fewer than three times into English, gives us the most intimate and penetrating description of Jacques in existence. It is more than likely that Hitler himself, an omnivorous if indiscriminate reader fascinated by Bizet, knew of this work, much of which, according to Sachs's friend, the novelist Violette Leduc, was written in the most hectic days of the war. At any rate Sachs himself never wearied of talking about Jacques and his father; the salient features of his book, or at any rate its more sensational events, can scarcely have escaped the dictator's notice. For, significantly, in his 'Table Talk'—and Hitler still discussed musical questions even when the Russians were approaching — Bizet is the only non-German composer to whom he alludes in a violent diatribe against unimaginative critics, who "tear great works to shreds, and are then themselves forgotten—completely, utterly forgotten". No statues would ever be erected to their memory; but 'Carmen', in everlasting splendour, would live on. Hitler, usually so impervious to the most elementary considerations of humanity, could hardly bear to think that one obtuse article might delay the recognition of a work of such genius for a whole generation. What an unforgivable instance of critical folly and ineptitude! In his warped mind so grim a realization strengthened his conviction that nothing could equal the abysmal folly and blindness of human beings, fit prey for any superman who chose to make use of them. Even in his most demented moods, when racialism was running amuck, he could never be prevailed upon to ban Bizet's masterpiece. In 1938 (the year of the composer's centenary) the German press constantly emphasized that both the librettists were Jewish (Richard Strauss's 'Die schweigsame Frau' had been prohibited for that very reason) and that Bizet's wife was a Jewess. There was, moreover, a persistent if unconfirmed rumour regarding a mysterious letter in which he had prided himself on being a Jew. Even Romain Rolland, in a con- versation with Ravel and Jean Marnold recorded in his diary, expressed the opinion that this may very well have been true. And he himself had for years been Jacques' close friend. Nevertheless, to the implacable fanatic, as to his mentor, Fried- rich Nietzsche, the creator of'Carmen' remained above and beyond nationality, race or creed. Brazenly one might proclaim that the most famous poems of Heine were anonymous productions; but Bizet's masterpiece was too firmly enshrined in the hearts of millions of Germans for any such foolish subterfuge. "In any case an excep- tion must be made in favour of Bizet, even if he should happen to

364 have Jewish blood in his veins"—such was the wording of a curious document officially forwarded to the director of a major German theatre. Incidentally, another would-be superman, Benito Mussolini, who had peremptorily banned many a French masterpiece, no more thought of prohibiting 'Carmen' than of forbidding Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article-abstract/XLIX/4/357/1068074 by University of Manchester user on 16 August 2019 Shakespeare. However, once again, as in 1914, the bitter contro- versies of war were revived. Then it had been Strauss himself who had protested vehemently against the performances of'Carmen'; but in the grim Nazi era he had grown more rational and objective. Distressed by his somewhat ambiguous role at that time, we find him writing angrily to his intimate friend, Julius Kopsch: "I hear that the Aryan law will be sharpened and that 'Carmen' will be banned. I have no wish to participate actively in any such embarrassing blunder". To him Bizet's work was no longer merely an unwelcome Gallic intruder, but "one of the greatest operatic masterpieces of all time". Thus, in both wars 'Carmen' trampled intolerance under foot. But the son of its creator was even more haunted by misfortune than his father. 1922 proved a calamitous year for him; by now he seems to have resolved to isolate himself more and more. To my surprise, he had ceased to tend his father's grave; I found that simple and noble monument at the Pere-Lachaise in a state of utter neglect, unlike the tomb of Oscar Wilde, which was covered with flowers. Unfortunately, at that time Jacques was involved in yet another hopeless emotional entanglement; great beauty acted upon him with all- the pernicious force of a drug. The passionate obsessions his father had imagined and, with such un- rivalled mastery, portrayed in music, appeared to be embodied in his own son. Persistent failure in the artistic sphere, accompanied by the anguish of spumed love, conspired to destroy him. On 3 November he shot himself as he had long planned. Maurice Sachs, then only a boy fanatically devoted to his grandmother's husband, gives us in 'Le Sabbat' a last, moving glimpse of the man he idolized: "How young and handsome he looked! A great nobility had come back to his face, as well as a virile dignity. It really seemed as though his soul had returned to inhabit his body". The manner of his death remained carefully concealed; the Press recorded the event (which, however, surprised few) with a laconic terseness. Yet, though he had sadly deteriorated, he was mourned by many, because, somewhat in the spirit of Tolstoy, he had believed that his wealth belonged to every suffering human being. Barely a week later his intimate friend Marcel Proust un- expectedly died. It is little known that many a characteristic Proustian aphorism emanated from Jacques and his witty mother, both famous for their apt choice of arresting phrases and stinging words. As for Genevieve, at the age of 72 she still scintillated in her gay salon—she whose health Georges Bizet during his brief existence had believed to be so frail and precarious that many a letter of his

365 sounds like a cry of anguish. She survived both husband and son; well might she have murmured with the aged Emperor Francis Joseph: "Nothing in this harsh world has been spared me". Yet Jacques' life has one redeeming feature which, in its way, is not altogether unimpressive. Like his father who, with tireless zest, Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article-abstract/XLIX/4/357/1068074 by University of Manchester user on 16 August 2019 explored in his operas every country—Ceylon, Russia, Scotland, Egypt, Provence and, at last, Spain, so he himself had sampled every form of activity, from the most mundane to the most artistic. Enigmatic he remains, an amazing amalgam of intrepid adventurer and tragic wastrel, a kind of French Branwell Bronte. More than 20 years later Maurice Sachs, who himself died mysteriously in May 1945, glorified him as "the person I loved most of all in the whole world; to me he was aureoled with a legendary greatness". Now Sachs, despite obvious defects of character, was a shrewd observer as well as a very remarkable writer of unflinching sincerity; his was no blind hero-worship but an almost scientific detachment. In fact, in poor, unhappy Jacques lingered a spark of that resolution which had urged his mother, whose reason had so often been despaired of, to become not merely a famous but the wittiest society hostess of Paris, the idol of numerous artists, including the fastidious Proust. In a much higher form was it not the same nervous tenacity which had enabled his father, in the teeth of what we now fully realize was implacable opposition, to achieve one of the most memorable feats in musical history: the establishment of serious opera in the frivolous and inartistic Paris of 1875, demoralized by a lost war and a vindictive peace ? In their versatile and tragic son, the double heritage of these two extraordinary people is, though only intermittently, strikingly reflected. Indeed, all three of them reacted equally strongly to insensitive and boorish opposition. Georges Bizet, a mere month before his death, bearing down upon an insolent critic (who had branded 'Carmen' as "only fit for a brothel") and savagely denouncing him, reminds one forcibly of his son truculently challenging to a duel an arrogant nobleman who had dared to belittle his father—and it was in the full public glare of a box at the theatre that this violent encounter took place. Like the hero of 'L'Arle'sienne', Jacques, too, died of a love which had been ridiculed and disdained. How strange it is that exactly half a century before, at the very time of his son's birth, Georges Bizet, then already at the height of his genius, should have been creating a masterpiece which suggests a mournful" premonition of the death of his own child. Who then can claim, with dogmatic finality, that life never imitates great art?

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