Les pêcheurs de perles is an opera in three acts by the French composer Georges Bizet, to a libretto by Eugène Cormon and Michel Carré. It was premiered on 30 September 1863 at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris. The opera tells the story of how two men’s vow of eternal friendship is threatened by their love for the same woman.
About Les pêcheurs de perles in brief
Les pêcheurs de perles is an opera in three acts by the French composer Georges Bizet, to a libretto by Eugène Cormon and Michel Carré. It was premiered on 30 September 1863 at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris, and was given 18 performances in its initial run. The opera tells the story of how two men’s vow of eternal friendship is threatened by their love for the same woman, whose own dilemma is the conflict between secular love and her sacred oath as a priestess. Despite a good reception by the public, press reactions to the work were generally hostile and dismissive, although other composers, notably Hector Berlioz, found considerable merit in the music. From 1886 onwards it was performed with some regularity in Europe and North America, and from the mid-20th century has entered the repertory of opera houses worldwide. Since 1950 the work has been recorded on numerous occasions, in both the revised and original versions. Modern critics describe the quality of the music as uneven and at times unoriginal, but acknowledge the opera as a work of promise. They have identified clear foreshadowings of the composer’s genius which would culminate, 10 years later, in Carmen. The friendship duet, generally known as “The Pearl Fishers Duet”, is one of the best-known in Western opera. At the time of the premiere, Bizett was not yet 25 years old: he had yet to establish himself in the Parisian musical world.
In 1857 Bizets was awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome, and as a result spent most of the following three years in Italy, where he wrote Don Procopio, a short opera buffa in the style of Donizetti. He planned and possibly began several operatic works before his return to Paris in 1860, but none of these projects came to fruition. In April 1862, as the La guzla de l’Emirates rehearsals proceeded, he was approached by Léon Carvalhoé, manager of the independent ThÉâtreLyrique company. CarvalHoé had a high opinion of Bzet’s abilities and offered him the libretti of Les pê Cheres de Perles, an exotic three-act opera from a recent Prix de Rome winner. On condition that each year he produced a new three-acts opera, on condition that he got a grant of 100,000 francs from the Fine Arts Minister of Fine Arts, Count Walewski, retiring by the end of the year. The Prix de Rome was a condition of the Opéra-Comique’s state funding, and in 1862 he wrote La Guzla de L’emirates, which went into rehearsals early in April 1862. By this time, the French musical world had hardly changed since the 1830s. Even established French composers such as Gounod had difficulty getting works performed there. Although more French works were performed, the style and character of most productions had hardly change since the 18th century.
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