Passage 1:
Helperich von Plötzkau, Margrave of the Nordmark
Helperich (Helferich) (d. 1118), Count of Plötzkau and Walbeck, and Margrave of the Nordmark, son of Dietrich, Count of Plötzkau, and Mathilde von Walbeck, daughter of Conrad, Count of Walbeck, and Adelheid of Bavaria.  The count's sister Irmgard was married to Lothair Udo III, Margrave of the Nordmark, and was the mother of Helperich's successor in ruling the margraviate, Henry II.
Helperich inherited the title Count of Plötzkau upon his father’s death and the title Count of Walbeck from his mother, although this title was mostly ceremonial at this point.  In 1112, Emperor Henry V deposed Rudolf I as Margrave of the Nordmark because of conspiracy against the crown in his alliance with Lothair of Supplinburg, then Duke of Saxony (and later Holy Roman Emperor).  The margraviate was given to Helperich as an interim measure until Henry II, nephew of Rudolf and heir to the title, was of age.
In 1106, Helperich married Adele, daughter of Kuno of Northeim and Kunigunde of Weimar-Orlamünde, widow of Dietrich III, Count of Katlenburg.  Helperich and Adele had four children:

Bernhard (d. 1147), Count of Plötzkau
Conrad, Margrave of the Nordmark
Irmgard, Abbess of Hecklingen
Mathilde.Halperich died in 1118 and was buried at the Hecklingen Monastery.  Upon his death, he was succeeded as Count of Plötzkau by his son Bernhard.  Henry II assumed the role of Margrave of the Nordmark in 1114.

Sources
Hucke, Richard G., Die Grafen von Stade. 900–1144. Genealogie, politische Stellung, Comitat und Allodialbesitz der sächsischen Udonen. Stade 1956
Passage 2:
Lothair Udo III, Margrave of the Nordmark
Lothair Udo III (1070-1106), Margrave of the Nordmark and Count of Stade (as Lothair Udo IV), son of Lothair Udo II, Margrave of the Nordmark, and Oda of Werl, daughter of Herman III, Count of Werl, and Richenza of Swabia.  Brother of his predecessor Henry I the Long.
Lothair Udo was betrothed to Eilika of Saxony, daughter of Magnus, Duke of Saxony, and Sophia of Hungary. However, his attention was diverted to the House of Helperich, towards Count Helperich's enticing sister Ermengardam.  He married this woman, the count's sister Irmgard, daughter of Dietrich, Count of Plötzkau, and Mathilde von Walbeck, daughter of Conrad, Count of Walbeck.  Eilika moved on and married Otto the Rich, Count of Ballenstedt, and was mother to Albert the Bear, the last Margrave of the Nordmark and first Margrave of Brandenburg.  This provides an interesting twist in the history of the county of Stade.
Lothair Udo and Irmgard had four children:

Henry II, Margrave of the Nordmark, also Count of Stade (as Henry IV)
A daughter whose name is not known
Irmgard von Stade, married Poppo IV, Count of Henneberg
Adelheid von Stade, married Henry II, Margrave of Meissen.Lothair Udo was succeeded by his brother Rudolf as margrave and count upon his death.

Sources
Hucke, Richard G., Die Grafen von Stade. 900–1144. Genealogie, politische Stellung, Comitat und Allodial- besitz der sächsischen Udonen, Selbstverlag des Stader Geschichts und Heimatvereins, Stade, 1956
Raffensperger, Christian, Reimagining Europe, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2012
Passage 3:
Albert II, Margrave of Brandenburg
Albert II (c. 1177 – 25 February 1220) was a member of the House of Ascania who ruled as the margrave of Brandenburg from 1205 until his death in 1220.

Life
Albert II was the youngest son of Otto I and his second wife Ada of Holland. His father Otto I promoted and directed the foundation of German settlement in the area, which had been Slavic until the 10th century.

Count of Arneburg
Albert II was, from 1184 onwards, Count of Arneburg in the Altmark.  The Altmark belonged to Brandenburg, and his older brother Otto II claimed that this implied that the Ascanians owned Arneburg.
When Henry of Gardeleggen died in 1192, he left his domains to Albert II. But that caused a conflict between himself and his brother. He was temporarily imprisoned in 1194 by Otto.
In 1197, he joined the German Crusade of 1197. He was present at the inaugural meeting of the Teutonic Knights in 1198 in Acre.

Margrave of Brandenburg
Albert II inherited the Margraviate in 1205, after the death of his eldest brother Otto II.
In the dispute about the imperial crown between the Houses of Hohenstaufen and Guelph in the early 13th century, Albert initially supported the Hohenstaufen King Philip of Swabia, like Otto before him.  After Philip's assassination in 1208, however, he changed sides, because Emperor Otto IV had assisted him in securing the Margraviate against the Danes, and had confirmed Ascanian ownership of Brandenburg in a deed in 1212.
During this period, Albert II had a lengthy dispute with Archbishop Albert I of Magdeburg. He also played an important rôle in the Brandenburg tithe dispute.
Albert II definitively secured the regions of Teltow, Prignitz and parts of the Uckermark for the Margraviate of Brandenburg, but lost Pomerania to the House of Griffins.

Death and succession
Albert II died in 1220.  At the time, his two sons were still minors.  Initially, archbishop Albert I of Magdeburg acted as regent.  In 1221, however, Albert's widow, Countess Matilda, took up the regency.  After her death in 1225, the brothers were declared legal adults and began ruling the Margraviate jointly.

Legacy
Stephan Warnatsch describes Otto I's children as follows:[They] continued the territorialisation drive that had been initiated [by their father] and, from the end of the 12th Century, as the influx of settlers grew stronger, and, consequently, more people were available to develop the territory, started to expand into the areas of Ruppin, and in particular, Barnim and Teltow.  Moreover, the Oder region and the southern Uckermark were also targets of the Ascanian expansion.  In all these areas, the Ascanians ran into opposition from competing local princes.

Marriage and issue
In 1205, Albert married Matilda of Groitzsch (1185–1225), daughter of the Count Conrad II of Lusatia, a member of the House of Wettin, and wife Elizabeth, from the Polish Piast dynasty.  They had four children:

John I (born: c. 1213; died: 4 April 1266)
Otto III "the Pious" (born: 1215; died: 9 October 1267)
Matilda (died: 10 June 1261), married in 1228 Duke Otto I "the Child" of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1204–1252), a member of the House of Guelph
Elizabeth (born: 1207; died: 19 November 1231), married in 1228 Landgrave Henry Raspe of Thuringia (1201–1247)
Passage 4:
Henry II, Margrave of Baden-Hachberg
Henry II, Margrave of Baden-Hachberg (before 1231 – c. 1297/1298) was the ruling Margrave of Baden-Hachberg from 1231 to 1289.

Life
Henry II was the eldest son of Margrave Henry I of Baden-Hachberg and his wife, Agnes, a daughter of Count Egino IV of Urach.  In 1231, he succeeded his father as Margrave of Baden-Hachberg.  Since he was a minor at the time, he initially stood under the guardianship of his mother.  He was the first in his line of the House of Zähringen to style himself Margrave of Hachberg.  In 1232, he purchased the Lordship of Sausenburg from St. Blaise Abbey.  Soon afterwards, he built Sausenburg Castle, which was first mentioned in 1246.He had disputes with the spiritual rulers in the area and with the Counts of Freiburg about the entangled rights and privileges they had (or claimed to have) on each other's possessions.  In 1250, some imperial and Hohenstaufen possessions became available for the taking after Emperor Frederick II had died.  Henry II grabbed some of these land and managed round off his territory.
For several years, he supported Count Rudolph of Habsburg in his disputes against the bishops of Basel and Strasbourg.  In 1273, he supported Rudolph in his bid to become King of the Romans.  He also supported Rudolph in his dispute against the main line of the Margraves of Baden.  During the war against Bohemia, Henry II fought on the imperial side in the decisive Battle on the Marchfeld.
He was a patron of the monasteries Tennenbach and Adelhausen.Henry II abdicated in 1289, and joined the Teutonic Knights.

Marriage and issue
Henry II was married to Anne, a daughter of Count Rudolph II of Üsingen-Ketzingen.  They had the following children:

Henry III, his successor as Margrave of Baden-Hachberg
Rudolf I, the first Margrave of Hachberg-Sausenberg
Frederick, who also joined the Teutonic Knights
Verena, married Egino I, Count of Fürstenberg
Herman I, joined the Knights Hospitaller
Kunigunde, a nun at Adelhausen
Agnes, married Walter of Reichenberg
Elisabeth, also a nun at Adelhausen
Passage 5:
Henry II, Margrave of the Nordmark
Henry II (1102 – 4 December 1128), Margrave of the Nordmark, also Count of Stade (as Henry IV), son of Lothair Udo III, Margrave of the Nordmark, and  Irmgard, daughter of Dietrich, Count of Plötzkau, and Mathilde von Walbeck.
Henry assumed the title of Margrave of the Nordmark in 1114 from Helperich of Plötzkau, who was appointed margrave until Henry came of age. The previous margrave in this dynasty was Henry’s uncle Rudolf I, who was also his guardian.  Rudolf was deposed by Emperor Henry V because of conspiracy against the crown, and was replaced by Helperich as an interim measure.  Henry assumed the titles of Count of Stade and Margrave of the Nordmark in 1114.
Henry was married to Adelaide of Ballenstedt, a daughter of Otto, Count of Ballenstedt, and Eilika of Saxony.  Adelaide was therefore the sister of Albert the Bear. There are no known children as a result of this union.  Henry was succeeded as margrave by the son of Helperich, Conrad of Plötzkau.

Sources
Krause, Karl Ernst Hermann, Lothar Udo II. und das Stader Grafenhaus. In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. Band 19, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig, 1884

== External links ==
Passage 6:
Henry II, Margrave of Meissen
Henry II (1103–1123) was the Margrave of Meissen and the Saxon Ostmark (as Lusizensis marchio: margrave of Lusatia) from his birth until his death. He was the posthumous son of Margrave Henry I and Gertrude of Brunswick, daughter of Egbert I of Meissen. He was by inheritance also Count of Eilenburg. He was the second Meissener margrave of the House of Wettin.
He was initially under the regency of first his mother and after her death in 1117 under his great uncle Thimo. He died young and without children in 1123. His lands were inherited by his half-sister Richenza of Northeim. He left a widow, Adelaide, daughter of Lothair Udo III, Margrave of the Nordmark. The succession to the marches was disputed after his death.
Passage 7:
Rudolf II, Margrave of the Nordmark
Rudolf II (died 14 March 1144), Margrave of the Nordmark, and Count of Stade, Dithmarschen and Freckleben, son of Rudolf I, Margrave of the Nordmark, and Richardis, daughter of Hermann von Sponheim, Burgrave of Magdeburg.
Rudolf, the traditional heir to the margraviate assumed the title upon the death of his predecessor Conrad von Plötzkau.
A chronicle of the 15th century reported that Rudolf resided in Burg, Dithmarschen (Bökelnburg). He ruled with a heavy hand and demanded his grain tithe even after several years of drought. The Dithmarscher farmers used a ruse to get rid of their unpopular regent. Hidden in sacks of corn were weapons.  As agreed, they opened the bags at the sound of the battle cry "Röhret de Hann, snidet de sac spell!" (Shall ye touch hands, cuts the bag volumes). They set the castle on fire, killed the count and so won their freedom. This event is still recounted today in performances at the castle. His widow, Elizabeth, later married Henry V, Duke of Carinthia.Rudolf was married to Elisabeth, daughter of Leopold I the Strong, Margrave of Styria. No children are recorded of this union. With the death of Rudolf, the male line of the Margraves of the Nordmark died out.
After the death of Rudolf, his brother Hartwig transferred his inheritance to the Archbishopric of Bremen in return for a regrant of a life interest, presumably to obtain a powerful protector against the aggression of Henry the Lion.  The move was ineffective, as Henry took possession of the lands and captured both Hartwig and the archbishop Adelbero, releasing them only after they agreed to recognize his claim.
Rudolf’s successor as Margrave of the Nordmark was Albert the Bear.  Upon Rudolf's death, his brother Hartwig succeeded him as Count of Stade.
Passage 8:
Henry I the Long, Margrave of the Nordmark
Henry I the Long (c. 1065 – 27 June 1087), Margrave of the Nordmark, also Count of Stade (as Henry III), son of Lothair Udo II, Margrave of the Nordmark, and Oda of Werl, daughter of Herman III, Count of Werl, and Richenza of Swabia.
Henry married Eupraxia of Kiev, daughter of Vsevolod I, Grand Prince of Kiev, and his second wife Anna.  There were no children as a result of this marriage, and Eupraxia, widowed, married next Henry IV, then King of Saxony, who became Holy Roman Emperor.
Raffensperger suggests that Henry's motivation in marrying Eupraxia was to bring Saxony closer to Kiev.  In fact, the marriage may have been arranged by Oda of Stade, daughter of Lothair Udo I, Margrave of the Nordmark, who had married Sviatoslav II, Grand Prince of Kiev. Oda is identified as a relative of Henry’s father Lothair Udo II as well as a niece of Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor, and Pope Leo IX.
Upon his death, Henry was succeeded as margrave and count by his brother Lothair Udo III.

Notes
Sources
Vernadsky, George, Kievan Russia, Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 1948, ISBN 9780300010077
Raffensperger, Christian, Reimagining Europe: Kievan Rus' in the Medieval World, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2012
H. Rüß, ‘Eupraxia-Adelheid. Eine biographische Annäherung,‘ Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 54 (2006), 481–518.

== External links ==
Passage 9:
Theodoric I, Margrave of Meissen
Theodoric I (11 March 1162 – 18 February 1221), called the Oppressed (Dietrich der Bedrängte), was the Margrave of Meissen from 1198 until his death. He was the second son of Otto II, Margrave of Meissen and Hedwig of Brandenburg.

Biography
Theodoric, called in German Dietrich, the younger son of Otto II, Margrave of Meissen, fell out with his brother, Albert the Proud, after his mother persuaded his father to change the succession so that Theodoric was given the Margraviate of Meissen and Albrecht (although the older son) the margraviate of Weissenfels. Albert took his father prisoner to try to make him return the succession to the way it had been. After Otto obtained his release by an order of the emperor Frederick I, he had only just renewed the war when he died in 1190. Albert then took back the Meissen margraviate from his brother. Theodoric attempted to regain the margraviate, supported by Landgraf Hermann I of Thuringia, his father-in-law. In 1195, however, Theodoric left on a pilgrimage to Palestine.

Albrecht's Death
After Albrecht's death in 1195, leaving no children, Meissen, with its rich mines, was seized by the emperor Henry VI as a vacant fief of the empire. Dietrich finally came into possession of his inheritance two years later on Henry's death.
At the time of the struggle between the two rival kings Philip of Swabia and Otto IV, Holy Roman Emperor, Phillip gave Dietrich the tenure of the march of Meißen again. After that time, Dietrich was on Phillip's side and remained true to the Staufer even after Phillip was murdered in 1208.
Dietrich became caught up in dangerous disagreements with the city of Leipzig and the Meißen nobility. After a fruitless siege of Leipzig, in 1217 he agreed to a settlement but then took over the city by trickery, had the city walls taken down and built three castles of his own within the city, full of his own men.

Death
Margrave Dietrich died on 18 February 1221, possibly poisoned by his doctor, instigated into doing so by the people of Leipzig and the dissatisfied nobility. He left behind a widow, Jutta of Thuringia, daughter of Hermann I, Landgrave of Thuringia. Some of his children had already died.

Marriages and issue
Children from his marriage to Jutta of Thuringia, daughter of Hermann I, Landgrave of Thuringia:
Hedwig (d. 1249) married Count Dietrich V of Cleves (1185–1260)
Otto (d. before 1215)
Sophia (d. 1280) married Count Henry of Henneberg-Schleusingen (d. 1262)
Jutta married Mestwin II, Duke of Pomerania
Henry the Illustrious (1218–1288) Margrave of MeissenChildren from extramarital liaisons:

Konrad
Dietrich II (not the same as Dietrich von Kittlitz)
Heinrich
Passage 10:
William, Margrave of the Nordmark
William (died 10 September 1056) was the Margrave of the Nordmark from 1051 until his death. He was the eldest son and successor of the Margrave Bernard by a daughter of Vladimir the Great. He died fighting the Slavs in the Battle of Pritzlawa. Upon his death, he was succeeded by his half-brother Otto as Margrave of the Nordmark.

Sources
Bury, J. B. (editor), The Cambridge Medieval History: Volume III, Germany and the Western Empire, Cambridge University Press, 1922, page 306


Passage 1:
Carmen on Ice
Carmen on Ice is a 1990 dance film with a choreography for figure skaters made in Germany. The music is based on the opera Carmen by Georges Bizet in an orchestral version arranged especially for this film. In contrast to figure skating movies of former times, Carmen on Ice is a film without spoken dialogue, which is an innovation in the history of figure skating.

Plot
The story of Carmen on Ice is very similar to the opera Carmen. Analogous to the four-act opera libretto the screenplay has four parts:
A Square in Sevilla in front of a cigarette factory: Micaela, a village maiden, brings a letter to the Corporal of Dragoons Don José, which was written by his mother. The cigarette girls emerge from the factory, among them the attractive Carmen, who starts to flirt with the men standing on the square. The only man who does not show interest in Carmen is Don José, who is reading his mother's letter. Finally, however, Carmen manages to attract also his attention by dancing for him and giving him a rose. The other young women are jealous, and one of them attacks Carmen. Carmen slashes her face with a knife. Others involve and start a street fighting, which is stopped by Zuniga, the Lieutenant of Dragoons. Everybody accuses Carmen of having started the fight. Zuniga asks Carmen if she has anything to say and also starts to flirt with her. Carmen, however, is not interested in him. Zuniga instructs José to guard Carmen. José ties up her hands with a rope. To escape, Carmen seduces José in a dance with this rope. The corporal unties her hands, and Carmen can run away. The angry Zuniga instructs his dragoons to guard José.
Evening at Lillas Pastia's inn: Carmen is waiting impatiently for Don José, who has been released from prison. To drive away her boredom, she starts to dance. The toreador Escamillo enters the inn and is welcomed by the other guests. He shows a virtuoso solo dance and attracts Carmen's attention. While Escamillo leaves the inn with his friends, Don José comes in and is welcomed by Carmen, who shows a solo, which leads in a pair dance with her new lover. Suddenly the sound of bugles is heard calling the soldiers back to barracks. When José wants to leave, Carmen gets angry.  José affirms his love to her in a solo with the rose she has given to him at their first meeting. Zuniga suddenly interrupts the two lovers and flirts with Carmen, which makes José so jealous, that he attacks the lieutenant, and leaves the service and joins Carmen and her friends.
A wild and deserted rocky place at night: Carmen has grown tired of José, her new favorite is the toreador Escamillo. She sits at a campfire and tries to tell fortunes by the shapes made by molten lead dropped into cold water. The shape which she holds in her hand is a skull. Carmen is scared and dances nervously around the campfire. Escamillo comes to the place and makes José jealous by showing him Carmen's fan. The two rivals start fighting. Escamillo emerges victorious and retires with Carmen.
A square in front of the arena in Seville: The square is full of people who cheer to procession as the bullfighting team with Escamillo arrives. Carmen welcomes the toreador and dreams of a wedding dance with him. After the bullfighting team has entered the arena, Carmen is grabbed by Don José and pulled into an outbuilding. José begs her to return his love, but is rejected by Carmen. Don José loses control of himself and stabs Carmen to death.

Background
Carmen on Ice was filmed in Spain and Germany, citizens of Sevilla and Berlin played bit parts. In 1988 Katarina Witt, who played the title role, had won her second olympic gold medal at the winter games in Calgary with a free skating to Carmen. Brian Boitano, who played the part of Don José, became Olympic champion in the same year followed by Brian Orser, the Olympic silver medallist of 1988 and actor playing Escamillo. So, it was obvious to cast the film with these stars.
Carmen on Ice was first presented in public on February 8, 1990. and won the Emmy-Award for Outstanding Performance in a Classical Music or Dance Program in 1990. The award was shared by the film's three stars, Boitano, Orser and Witt. The choreography by Sandra Bezic and Michael Seibert (figure skater) was influenced by elements of classical ballet and flamenco as well. During the rehearsals the skaters were also coached by flamenco dancer Cristina Hoyos.

Bibliography
Art music in figure skating, synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics/Kunstmusik in Eiskunstlauf, Synchronschwimmen und rhythmischer Gymnastik. PhD thesis by Johanna Beisteiner, Vienna 2005, (German). The PhD thesis contains an extensive description and analysis of Carmen on Ice (Chapter II/2, pages 105-162). Article about the PhD thesis of Johanna Beisteiner in the catalogue of the Austrian Library Network. 2005. (German and English)
Passage 2:
Mehdi Abrishamchi
Mehdi Abrishamchi (Persian: مهدی ابریشم‌چی born in 1947 in Tehran) is a high-ranking member of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK).

Early life
Abrishamchi came from a well-known anti-Shah bazaari family in Tehran, and participated in June 5, 1963, demonstrations in Iran. He became a member of Hojjatieh, and left it to join the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) in 1969. In 1972 he was imprisoned for being a MEK member, and spent time in jail until 1979.

Career
Shortly after Iranian Revolution, he became one of the senior members of the MEK. He is now an official in the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

Electoral history
Personal life
Abrishamchi was married to Maryam Rajavi from 1980 to 1985. Shortly after, he married Mousa Khiabani's younger sister Azar.

Legacy
Abrishamchi credited Massoud Rajavi for saving the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran after the "great schism".
Passage 3:
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet (né Alexandre César Léopold Bizet; 25 October 1838 – 3 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, which has become one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertoire.
During a brilliant student career at the Conservatoire de Paris, Bizet won many prizes, including the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1857. He was recognised as an outstanding pianist, though he chose not to capitalise on this skill and rarely performed in public. Returning to Paris after almost three years in Italy, he found that the main Parisian opera theatres preferred the established classical repertoire to the works of newcomers. His keyboard and orchestral compositions were likewise largely ignored; as a result, his career stalled, and he earned his living mainly by arranging and transcribing the music of others. Restless for success, he began many theatrical projects during the 1860s, most of which were abandoned. Neither of his two operas that reached the stage in this time—Les pêcheurs de perles and La jolie fille de Perth—were immediately successful.
After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, during which Bizet served in the National Guard, he had little success with his one-act opera Djamileh, though an orchestral suite derived from his incidental music to Alphonse Daudet's play L'Arlésienne was instantly popular. The production of his final opera, Carmen, was delayed because of fears that its themes of betrayal and murder would offend audiences. After its premiere on 3 March 1875, Bizet was convinced that the work was a failure; he died of a heart attack three months later, unaware that it would prove a spectacular and enduring success.
Bizet's marriage to Geneviève Halévy was intermittently happy and produced one son. After his death, his work, apart from Carmen, was generally neglected. Manuscripts were given away or lost, and published versions of his works were frequently revised and adapted by other hands. He founded no school and had no obvious disciples or successors. After years of neglect, his works began to be performed more frequently in the 20th century. Later commentators have acclaimed him as a composer of brilliance and originality whose premature death was a significant loss to French musical theatre.

Life
Early years
Family background and childhood
Georges Bizet was born in Paris on 25 October 1838. He was registered as Alexandre César Léopold, but baptised as "Georges" on 16 March 1840, and was known by this name for the rest of his life. His father, Adolphe Bizet, had been a hairdresser and wigmaker before becoming a singing teacher despite his lack of formal training. He also composed a few works, including at least one published song. In 1837, Adolphe married Aimée Delsarte, against the wishes of her family who considered him a poor prospect; the Delsartes, though impoverished, were a cultured and highly musical family. Aimée was an accomplished pianist, while her brother François Delsarte was a distinguished singer and teacher who performed at the courts of both Louis Philippe and Napoleon III. François Delsarte's wife Rosine, a musical prodigy, had been an assistant professor of solfège at the Conservatoire de Paris at the age of 13. At least one author has suggested that his mother was from a Jewish family but this is not substantiated in any of his official biographies.Georges, an only child, showed early aptitude for music and quickly picked up the basics of musical notation from his mother, who probably gave him his first piano lessons. By listening at the door of the room where Adolphe conducted his classes, Georges learned to sing difficult songs accurately from memory and developed an ability to identify and analyse complex chordal structures. This precocity convinced his ambitious parents that he was ready to begin studying at the Conservatoire even though he was still only nine years old (the minimum entry age was 10). Georges was interviewed by Joseph Meifred, the horn virtuoso who was a member of the Conservatoire's Committee of Studies. Meifred was so struck by the boy's demonstration of his skills that he waived the age rule and offered to take him as soon as a place became available.

Conservatoire
Bizet was admitted to the Conservatoire on 9 October 1848, two weeks before his 10th birthday. He made an early impression; within six months he had won first prize in solfège, a feat that impressed Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume Zimmerman, the Conservatoire's former professor of piano. Zimmerman gave Bizet private lessons in counterpoint and fugue, which continued until the old man's death in 1853. Through these classes, Bizet met Zimmerman's son-in-law, the composer Charles Gounod, who became a lasting influence on the young pupil's musical style—although their relationship was often strained in later years. He also met another of Gounod's young students, the 13-year-old Camille Saint-Saëns, who remained a firm friend of Bizet's. Under the tuition of Antoine François Marmontel, the Conservatoire's professor of piano, Bizet's pianism developed rapidly; he won the Conservatoire's second prize for piano in 1851, and first prize the following year. Bizet would later write to Marmontel: "In your class one learns something besides the piano; one becomes a musician".

Bizet's first preserved compositions, two wordless songs for soprano, date from around 1850. In 1853, he joined Fromental Halévy's composition class and began to produce works of increasing sophistication and quality. Two of his songs, "Petite Marguerite" and "La Rose et l'abeille", were published in 1854. In 1855, he wrote an ambitious overture for a large orchestra, and prepared four-hand piano versions of two of Gounod's works: the opera La nonne sanglante and the Symphony in D. Bizet's work on the Gounod symphony inspired him, shortly after his seventeenth birthday, to write his own symphony, which bore a close resemblance to Gounod's—note for note in some passages. Bizet never published the symphony, which came to light again only in 1933, and was finally performed in 1935.In 1856, Bizet competed for the prestigious Prix de Rome. His entry was not successful, but nor were any of the others; the musician's prize was not awarded that year. After this rebuff, Bizet entered an opera competition which Jacques Offenbach had organised for young composers, with a prize of 1,200 francs. The challenge was to set the one-act libretto of Le docteur Miracle by Léon Battu and Ludovic Halévy. The prize was awarded jointly to Bizet and Charles Lecocq, a compromise which years later Lecocq criticised on the grounds of the jury's manipulation by Fromental Halévy in favour of Bizet. As a result of his success, Bizet became a regular guest at Offenbach's Friday evening parties, where among other musicians he met the aged Gioachino Rossini, who presented the young man with a signed photograph. Bizet was a great admirer of Rossini's music, and wrote not long after their first meeting that "Rossini is the greatest of them all, because like Mozart, he has all the virtues".For his 1857 Prix de Rome entry, Bizet, with Gounod's enthusiastic approval, chose to set the cantata Clovis et Clotilde by Amédée Burion. Bizet was awarded the prize after a ballot of the members of the Académie des Beaux-Arts overturned the judges' initial decision, which was in favour of the oboist Charles Colin. Under the terms of the award, Bizet received a financial grant for five years, the first two to be spent in Rome, the third in Germany and the final two in Paris. The only other requirement was the submission each year of an "envoi", a piece of original work to the satisfaction of the Académie. Before his departure for Rome in December 1857, Bizet's prize cantata was performed at the Académie to an enthusiastic reception.

Rome, 1858–1860
On 27 January 1858, Bizet arrived at the Villa Medici, a 16th-century palace that since 1803 had housed the French Académie in Rome and which he described in a letter home as "paradise". Under its director, the painter Jean-Victor Schnetz, the villa provided an ideal environment in which Bizet and his fellow-laureates could pursue their artistic endeavours. Bizet relished the convivial atmosphere, and quickly involved himself in the distractions of its social life; in his first six months in Rome, his only composition was a Te Deum written for the Rodrigues Prize, a competition for a new religious work open to Prix de Rome winners. This piece failed to impress the judges, who awarded the prize to Adrien Barthe, the only other entrant. Bizet was discouraged to the extent that he vowed to write no more religious music. His Te Deum remained forgotten and unpublished until 1971.Through the winter of 1858–59, Bizet worked on his first envoi, an opera buffa setting of Carlo Cambiaggio's libretto Don Procopio. Under the terms of his prize, Bizet's first envoi was supposed to be a mass, but after his Te Deum experience, he was averse to writing religious music. He was apprehensive about how this breach of the rules would be received at the Académie, but their response to Don Procopio was initially positive, with praise for the composer's "easy and brilliant touch" and "youthful and bold style".

For his second envoi, not wishing to test the Académie's tolerance too far, Bizet proposed to submit a quasi-religious work in the form of a secular mass on a text by Horace. This work, entitled Carmen Saeculare, was intended as a song to Apollo and Diana. No trace exists, and it is unlikely that Bizet ever started it. A tendency to conceive ambitious projects, only to quickly abandon them, became a feature of Bizet's Rome years; in addition to Carmen Saeculare, he considered and discarded at least five opera projects, two attempts at a symphony, and a symphonic ode on the theme of Ulysses and Circe. After Don Procopio, Bizet completed only one further work in Rome, the symphonic poem Vasco da Gama. This replaced Carmen Saeculare as his second envoi, and was well received by the Académie, though swiftly forgotten thereafter.In the summer of 1859, Bizet and several companions travelled in the mountains and forests around Anagni and Frosinone. They also visited a convict settlement at Anzio; Bizet sent an enthusiastic letter to Marmontel, recounting his experiences. In August, he made an extended journey south to Naples and Pompeii, where he was unimpressed with the former but delighted with the latter: "Here you live with the ancients; you see their temples, their theatres, their houses in which you find their furniture, their kitchen utensils..." Bizet began sketching a symphony based on his Italian experiences, but made little immediate headway; the project, which became his Roma symphony, was not finished until 1868. On his return to Rome, Bizet successfully requested permission to extend his stay in Italy into a third year, rather than going to Germany, so that he could complete "an important work" (which has not been identified). In September 1860, while visiting Venice with his friend and fellow-laureate Ernest Guiraud, Bizet received news that his mother was gravely ill in Paris, and made his way home.

Emergent composer
Paris, 1860–1863
Back in Paris with two years of his grant remaining, Bizet was temporarily secure financially and could ignore for the moment the difficulties that other young composers faced in the city. The two state-subsidised opera houses, the Opéra and the Opéra-Comique, each presented traditional repertoires that tended to stifle and frustrate new homegrown talent; only eight of the 54 Prix de Rome laureates between 1830 and 1860 had had works staged at the Opéra. Although French composers were better represented at the Opéra-Comique, the style and character of productions had remained largely unchanged since the 1830s. A number of smaller theatres catered for operetta, a field in which Offenbach was then paramount, while the Théâtre Italien specialised in second-rate Italian opera. The best prospect for aspirant opera composers was the Théâtre Lyrique company which, despite repeated financial crises, operated intermittently in various premises under its resourceful manager Léon Carvalho. This company had staged the first performances of Gounod's Faust and his Roméo et Juliette, and of a shortened version of Berlioz's Les Troyens.On 13 March 1861, Bizet attended the Paris premiere of Wagner's opera Tannhäuser, a performance greeted by audience riots that were stage-managed by the influential Jockey-Club de Paris. Despite this distraction, Bizet revised his opinions of Wagner's music, which he had previously dismissed as merely eccentric. He now declared Wagner "above and beyond all living composers". Thereafter, accusations of "Wagnerism" were often laid against Bizet, throughout his compositional career.As a pianist, Bizet had showed considerable skill from his earliest years. A contemporary asserted that he could have assured a future on the concert platform, but chose to conceal his talent "as though it were a vice". In May 1861 Bizet gave a rare demonstration of his virtuoso skills when, at a dinner party at which Liszt was present, he astonished everyone by playing on sight, flawlessly, one of the maestro's most difficult pieces. Liszt commented: "I thought there were only two men able to surmount the difficulties ... there are three, and ... the youngest is perhaps the boldest and most brilliant."

Bizet's third envoi was delayed for nearly a year by the prolonged illness and death, in September 1861, of his mother. He eventually submitted a trio of orchestral works: an overture entitled La Chasse d'Ossian, a scherzo and a funeral march. The overture has been lost; the scherzo was later absorbed into the Roma symphony, and the funeral march music was adapted and used in a later opera. Bizet's fourth and final envoi, which occupied him for much of 1862, was a one-act opera, La guzla de l'émir. As a state-subsidised theatre, the Opéra-Comique was obliged from time to time to stage the works of Prix de Rome laureates, and La guzla duly went into rehearsal in 1863. However, in April Bizet received an offer, which originated from Count Walewski, to compose the music for a three-act opera. This was Les pêcheurs de perles, based on a libretto by Michel Carré and Eugène Cormon. Because a condition of this offer was that the opera should be the composer's first publicly staged work, Bizet hurriedly withdrew La guzla from production and incorporated parts of its music into the new opera. The first performance of Les pêcheurs de perles, by the Théâtre Lyrique company, was on 30 September 1863. Critical opinion was generally hostile, though Berlioz praised the work, writing that it "does M. Bizet the greatest honour". Public reaction was lukewarm, and the opera's run ended after 18 performances. It was not performed again until 1886.In 1862, Bizet had fathered a child with the family's housekeeper, Marie Reiter. The boy was brought up to believe that he was Adolphe Bizet's child; only on her deathbed in 1913 did Reiter reveal her son's true paternity.

Years of struggle
When his Prix de Rome grant expired, Bizet found he could not make a living from writing music. He accepted piano pupils and some composition students, two of whom, Edmond Galabert and Paul Lacombe, became his close friends. He also worked as an accompanist at rehearsals and auditions for various staged works, including Berlioz's oratorio L'enfance du Christ and Gounod's opera Mireille. However, his main work in this period was as an arranger of others' works. He made piano transcriptions for hundreds of operas and other pieces and prepared vocal scores and orchestral arrangements for all kinds of music. He was also, briefly, a music critic for La Revue Nationale et Étrangère, under the assumed name of "Gaston de Betzi". Bizet's single contribution in this capacity appeared on 3 August 1867, after which he quarrelled with the magazine's new editor and resigned.Since 1862, Bizet had been working intermittently on Ivan IV, an opera based on the life of Ivan the Terrible. Carvalho failed to deliver on his promise to produce it, so in December 1865, Bizet offered it to the Opéra, which rejected it; the work remained unperformed until 1946. In July 1866, Bizet signed another contract with Carvalho, for La jolie fille de Perth, the libretto for which, by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges after Sir Walter Scott, is described by Bizet's biographer Winton Dean as "the worst Bizet was ever called upon to set". Problems over the casting and other issues delayed its premiere for a year before it was finally performed by the Théâtre Lyrique on 26 December 1867. Its press reception was more favourable than that for any of Bizet's other operas; Le Ménestral's critic hailed the second act as "a masterpiece from beginning to end". Despite the opera's success, Carvalho's financial difficulties meant a run of only 18 performances.While La jolie fille was in rehearsal, Bizet worked with three other composers, each of whom contributed a single act to a four-act operetta Marlbrough s'en va-t-en guerre. When the work was performed at the Théâtre de l'Athénée on 13 December 1867, it was a great success, and the Revue et Gazette Musicale's critic lavished particular praise on Bizet's act: "Nothing could be more stylish, smarter and, at the same time, more distinguished". Bizet also found time to finish his long-gestating Roma symphony and wrote numerous keyboard works and songs. Nevertheless, this period of Bizet's life was marked by significant disappointments. At least two projected operas were abandoned with little or no work done. Several competition entries, including a cantata and a hymn composed for the Paris Exhibition of 1867, were unsuccessful. La Coupe du Roi de Thulé, his entry for an opera competition, was not placed in the first five; from the fragments of this score that survive, analysts have discerned pre-echoes of Carmen. On 28 February 1869, the Roma symphony was performed at the Cirque Napoléon, under Jules Pasdeloup. Afterwards, Bizet informed Galabert that on the basis of proportionate applause, hisses, and catcalls, the work was a success.

Marriage
Not long after Fromental Halévy's death in 1862, Bizet had been approached on behalf of Mme. Halévy about completing his old tutor's unfinished opera Noé. Although no action was taken at that time, Bizet remained on friendly terms with the Halévy family. Fromental had left two daughters; the elder, Esther, died in 1864, an event which so traumatised Mme. Halévy that she could not tolerate the company of her younger daughter Geneviève, who from the age of 15 lived with other family members. It is unclear when Geneviève and Bizet became emotionally attached, but in October 1867, he informed Galabert: "I have met an adorable girl whom I love! In two years she will be my wife!" The pair became engaged, although the Halévy family initially disallowed the match. According to Bizet they considered him an unsuitable catch: "penniless, left-wing, anti-religious and Bohemian", which Dean observes are odd grounds of objection from "a family bristling with artists and eccentrics". By summer 1869, their objections had been overcome, and the wedding took place on 3 June 1869. Ludovic Halévy wrote in his journal: "Bizet has spirit and talent. He should succeed".As a belated homage to his late father-in-law, Bizet took up the Noé manuscript and completed it. Parts of his moribund Vasco da Gama and Ivan IV were incorporated into the score, but a projected production at the Théâtre Lyrique failed to materialise when Carvalho's company finally went bankrupt, and Noé remained unperformed until 1885. Bizet's marriage was initially happy, but was affected by Geneviève's nervous instability (inherited from both her parents), her difficult relations with her mother and by Mme. Halévy's interference in the couple's affairs. Despite this, Bizet kept on good terms with his mother-in-law and maintained an extensive correspondence with her. In the year following the marriage, he considered plans for at least half a dozen new operas and began to sketch the music for two of them: Clarissa Harlowe based on Samuel Richardson's novel Clarissa, and Grisélidis with a libretto from Victorien Sardou. However, his progress on these projects was brought to a halt in July 1870, with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War.

War and upheaval
After a series of perceived provocations from Prussia, culminating in the offer of the Spanish crown to the Prussian Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern, the French Emperor Napoleon III declared war on 15 July 1870. Initially, this step was supported by an outbreak of patriotic fervour and confident expectations of victory. Bizet, along with other composers and artists, joined the National Guard and began training. He was critical of the antiquated equipment with which he was supposed to fight; his unit's guns, he said, were more dangerous to themselves than to the enemy. The national mood was soon depressed by news of successive reverses; at Sedan on 2 September, the French armies suffered an overwhelming defeat; Napoleon was captured and deposed, and the Second Empire came to a sudden end.Bizet greeted with enthusiasm the proclamation in Paris of the Third Republic. The new government did not sue for peace, and by 17 September, the Prussian armies had surrounded Paris. Unlike Gounod, who fled to England, Bizet rejected opportunities to leave the besieged city: "I can't leave Paris! It's impossible! It would be quite simply an act of cowardice", he wrote to Mme Halévy. Life in the city became frugal and harsh, although, by October, there were efforts to re-establish normality. Pasdeloup resumed his regular Sunday concerts, and on 5 November, the Opéra reopened with excerpts from works by Gluck, Rossini, and Meyerbeer.An armistice was signed on 26 January 1871, but the departure of the Prussian troops from Paris in March presaged a period of confusion and civil disturbance. Following an uprising, the city's municipal authority was taken over by dissidents who established the Paris Commune. Bizet decided that he was no longer safe in the city, and he and Geneviève escaped to Compiègne. Later, they moved to Le Vésinet where they sat out the two months of the Commune, within hearing distance of the gunfire that resounded as government troops gradually crushed the uprising: "The cannons are rumbling with unbelievable violence", Bizet wrote to his mother-in-law on 12 May.

Late career
Djamileh, L'Arlésienne and Don Rodrigue
As life in Paris returned to normal, in June 1871, Bizet's appointment as chorus-master at the Opéra was seemingly confirmed by its director, Émile Perrin. Bizet was due to begin his duties in October, but on 1 November, the post was assumed by Hector Salomon. In her biography of Bizet, Mina Curtiss surmises that he either resigned or refused to take up the position as a protest against what he thought was the director's unjustified closing of Ernest Reyer's opera Erostrate after only two performances. Bizet resumed work on Clarissa Harlowe and Grisélidis, but plans for the latter to be staged at the Opéra-Comique fell through, and neither work was finished; only fragments of their music survive. Bizet's other completed works in 1871 were the piano duet entitled Jeux d'enfants, and a one-act opera, Djamileh, which opened at the Opéra-Comique in May 1872. It was poorly staged and incompetently sung; at one point the leading singer missed 32 bars of music. It closed after 11 performances, not to be heard again until 1938. On 10 July Geneviève gave birth to the couple's only child, a son, Jacques.

Bizet's next major assignment came from Carvalho, who was now managing Paris' Vaudeville theatre and wanted incidental music for Alphonse Daudet's play L'Arlésienne. When the play opened on 1 October, the music was dismissed by critics as too complex for popular taste. However, encouraged by Reyer and Massenet, Bizet fashioned a four-movement suite from the music, which was performed under Pasdeloup on 10 November to an enthusiastic reception. In the winter of 1872–73, Bizet supervised preparations for a revival of the still-absent Gounod's Roméo et Juliette at the Opéra-Comique. Relations between the two had been cool for some years, but Bizet responded positively to his former mentor's request for help, writing: "You were the beginning of my life as an artist. I spring from you".In June 1872, Bizet informed Galabert: "I have just been ordered to compose three acts for the Opéra-Comique. [Henri] Meilhac and [Ludovic] Halévy are doing my piece". The subject chosen for this project was Prosper Mérimée's short novel, Carmen. Bizet began the music in the summer of 1873, but the Opéra-Comique's management was concerned about the suitability of this risqué story for a theatre that generally provided wholesome entertainment, and work was suspended. Bizet then began composing Don Rodrigue, an adaptation of the El Cid story by Louis Gallet and Édouard Blau. He played a piano version to a select audience that included the Opéra's principal baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure, hoping that the singer's approval might influence the directors of the Opéra to stage the work. However, on the night of 28–29 October, the Opéra burned to the ground; the directors, amid other pressing concerns, set Don Rodrigue aside. It was never completed; Bizet later adapted a theme from its final act as the basis of his 1875 overture, Patrie.

Carmen
Adolphe de Leuven, the co-director of the Opéra-Comique most bitterly opposed to the Carmen project, resigned early in 1874, removing the main barrier to the work's production. Bizet finished the score during the summer and was pleased with the outcome: "I have written a work that is all clarity and vivacity, full of colour and melody". The renowned mezzo-soprano Célestine Galli-Marié (known professionally as "Galli-Marié") was engaged to sing the title role. According to Dean, she was as delighted by the part as Bizet was by her suitability for it. There were rumours that he and the singer pursued a brief affair; his relations with Geneviève were strained at this time, and they lived apart for several months.When rehearsals began in October 1874, the orchestra had difficulties with the score, finding some parts unplayable. The chorus likewise declared some of their music impossible to sing and were dismayed that they had to act as individuals, smoking and fighting onstage rather than merely standing in line. Bizet also had to counter further attempts at the Opéra-Comique to modify parts of the action which they deemed improper. Only when the leading singers threatened to withdraw from the production did the management give way. Resolving these issues delayed the first night until 3 March 1875 on which morning, by chance, Bizet's appointment as a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour was announced.Among leading musical figures at the premiere were Jules Massenet, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Charles Gounod. Geneviève, suffering from an abscess in her right eye, was unable to be present. The opera's first performance extended to four-and-a-half hours; the final act did not begin until after midnight. Afterwards, Massenet and Saint-Saëns were congratulatory, Gounod less so. According to one account, he accused Bizet of plagiarism: "Georges has robbed me! Take the Spanish airs and mine out of the score and there remains nothing to Bizet's credit but the sauce that masks the fish". Much of the press comment was negative, expressing consternation that the heroine was an amoral seductress rather than a woman of virtue. Galli-Marié's performance was described by one critic as "the very incarnation of vice". Others complained of a lack of melody and made unfavourable comparisons with the traditional Opéra-Comique fare of Auber and Boieldieu. Léon Escudier in L'Art Musical called the music "dull and obscure ... the ear grows weary of waiting for the cadence that never comes". There was, however, praise from the poet Théodore de Banville, who applauded Bizet for presenting a drama with real men and women instead of the usual Opéra-Comique "puppets". The public's reaction was lukewarm, and Bizet soon became convinced of its failure: "I foresee a definite and hopeless flop".

Illness and death
For most of his life, Bizet had suffered from a recurrent throat complaint. A heavy smoker, he may have further undermined his health by overwork during the mid-1860s, when he toiled over publishers' transcriptions for up to 16 hours a day. In 1868, he informed Galabert that he had been very ill with abscesses in the windpipe: "I suffered like a dog". In 1871, and again in 1874, while completing Carmen, he had been disabled by severe bouts of what he described as "throat angina", and suffered a further attack in late March 1875. At that time, depressed by the evident failure of Carmen, Bizet was slow to recover and fell ill again in May. At the end of the month, he went to his holiday home at Bougival and, feeling a little better, went for a swim in the Seine. On the next day, 1 June, he was afflicted by high fever and pain, which was followed by an apparent heart attack. He seemed temporarily to recover, but in the early hours of 3 June, his wedding anniversary, he suffered a fatal second attack. He was 36 years old.
The suddenness of Bizet's death, and awareness of his depressed mental state, fuelled rumours of suicide. Although the exact cause of death was never settled with certainty, physicians eventually determined the cause as "a cardiac complication of acute articular rheumatism". News of the death stunned the Paris musical world, and because Galli-Marié was too upset to appear, that evening's performance of Carmen was cancelled and replaced with Boieldieu's La dame blanche.More than 4,000 people were present at the funeral on 5 June, at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité, just to the north of the Opéra. Adolphe Bizet led the mourners, who included Gounod, Thomas, Ludovic Halévy, Léon Halévy and Massenet. An orchestra, under Jules Pasdeloup, played Patrie, and the organist improvised a fantasy on themes from Carmen. At the burial which followed at the Père Lachaise Cemetery, Gounod gave the eulogy. He said that Bizet had been struck down just as he was becoming recognised as a true artist. Towards the end of his address, Gounod broke down and was unable to deliver his peroration. After a special performance of Carmen at the Opéra-Comique that night, the press, which had almost universally condemned the piece three months earlier, now declared Bizet a master.

Music
Early works
Bizet's earliest compositions, chiefly songs and keyboard pieces written as exercises, give early indications of his emergent power and his gifts as a melodist. Dean sees evidence in the piano work Romance sans parole, written before 1854, of "the conjunction of melody, rhythm and accompaniment" that is characteristic of Bizet's mature works. Bizet's first orchestral piece was an overture written in 1855 in the manner of Rossini's Guillaume Tell. Critics have found it unremarkable, but the Symphony in C of the same year has been warmly praised by later commentators who have made favourable comparisons with Mozart and Schubert. In Dean's view, the symphony has "few rivals and perhaps no superior in the work of any composer of such youth". The critic Ernest Newman suggests that Bizet may at this time have thought that his future lay in the field of instrumental music, before an "inner voice" (and the realities of the French musical world) turned him towards the stage.

Orchestral, piano and vocal works
After his early Symphony in C, Bizet's purely orchestral output is sparse. The Roma symphony over which he laboured for more than eight years compares poorly, in Dean's view, with its juvenile predecessor. The work, says Dean, owes something to Gounod and contains passages that recall Weber and Mendelssohn. However, Dean contends that the work suffers from poor organisation and an excess of pretentious music; he calls it a "misfire". Bizet's other mature orchestral work, the overture Patrie, is similarly dismissed: "an awful warning of the danger of confusing art with patriotism".The musicologist Hugh Macdonald argues that Bizet's best orchestral music is found in the suites that he derived from the 12-movement Jeux d’enfants for piano four-hands (1871) and the musique de scène for Daudet's play L’Arlésienne (1872): Jeux resulted in the Petite suite of 1873, which has five movements (Marche—Berceuse—Impromptu—Duo—Galop), while the musique de scène resulted in two suites, one from the year of the premiere compiled by Bizet (Prélude—Menuet—Adagietto—Carillon) and the other from 1879 compiled posthumously by Guiraud (Pastorale—Intermezzo—Menuet—Farandole). According to Macdonald, in all three Bizet demonstrates a maturity of style that, had he lived longer, might have been the basis for future great orchestral works.Bizet's piano works have not entered the concert pianist's repertoire and are generally too difficult for amateurs to attempt. The exception is the above-described Jeux d’enfants duet suite; here Bizet avoids the virtuoso passages that so dominate his solo music. The early solo pieces bear the influence of Chopin; later works, such as the Variations chromatiques or the Chasse fantastique, owe more to Liszt.Most of Bizet's songs were written in the period 1866–68. Dean defines the main weaknesses in these songs as an unimaginative repetition of the same music for each verse, and a tendency to write for the orchestra rather than the voice. Much of Bizet's larger-scale vocal music is lost; the early Te Deum, which survives in full, is rejected by Dean as "a wretched work [that] merely illustrates Bizet's unfitness to write religious music."

Dramatic works
Bizet's early one-act opera Le docteur Miracle provides the first clear signs of his promise in this genre, its sparkling music including, according to Dean, "many happy touches of parody, scoring and comic characterisation". Newman perceives evidence of Bizet's later achievements in many of his earliest works: "[A]gain and again we light upon some touch or other in them that only a musician with a dramatic root of the matter in him could have achieved." Until Carmen, however, Bizet was not essentially an innovator in the musical theatre. He wrote most of his operas in the traditions of Italian and French opera established by such as Donizetti, Rossini, Berlioz, Gounod, and Thomas. Macdonald suggests that, technically, he surpassed all of these, with a feeling for the human voice that compares with that of Mozart.In Don Procopio, Bizet followed the stock devices of Italian opera as typified by Donizetti in Don Pasquale, a work which it closely resembles. However, the familiar idiom is interspersed with original touches in which Bizet's fingerprints emerge unmistakably. In his first significant opera, Les pêcheurs de perles, Bizet was hampered by a dull libretto and a laborious plot; nevertheless, the music in Dean's view rises at times "far above the level of contemporary French opera". Its many original flourishes include the introduction to the cavatina Comme autrefois dans la nuit sombre played by two French horns over a cello background, an effect which in the words of analyst Hervé Lacombe, "resonates in the memory like a fanfare lost in a distant forest". While the music of Les pêcheurs is atmospheric and deeply evocative of the opera's Eastern setting, in La jolie fille de Perth, Bizet made no attempt to introduce Scottish colour or mood, though the scoring includes highly imaginative touches such as a separate band of woodwind and strings during the opera's Act III seduction scene.From Bizet's unfinished works, Macdonald highlights La coupe du roi de Thulé as giving clear signs of the power that would reach a pinnacle in Carmen and suggests that had Clarissa Harlowe and Grisélidis been completed, Bizet's legacy would have been "infinitely richer". As Bizet moved away from the accepted musical conventions of French opera, he encountered critical hostility. In the case of Djamileh, the accusation of "Wagnerism" was raised again, as audiences struggled to understand the score's originality; many found the music pretentious and monotonous, lacking in both rhythm and melody. By contrast, modern critical opinion as expressed by Macdonald is that Djamileh is "a truly enchanting piece, full of inventive touches, especially of chromatic colour."Ralph P. Locke, in his study of Carmen's origins, draws attention to Bizet's successful evocation of Andalusian Spain. Grout, in his History of Western Music, praises the music's extraordinary rhythmic and melodic vitality, and Bizet's ability to obtain the maximum dramatic effect in the most economical fashion. Among the opera's early champions were Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and particularly Wagner, who commented: "Here, thank God, at last for a change is somebody with ideas in his head." Another champion of the work was Friedrich Nietzsche, who claimed to know it by heart; "It is music that makes no pretensions to depth, but it is delightful in its simplicity, so unaffected and sincere". By broad consent, Carmen represents the fulfilment of Bizet's development as a master of music drama and the culmination of the genre of opéra comique.

Legacy
After Bizet's death, many of his manuscripts were lost; works were revised by other hands and published in these unauthorised versions so that it is often difficult to establish what is authentic Bizet. Even Carmen was altered into grand opera format by the replacement of its dialogue with recitatives written by Guiraud, and by other amendments to the score. The music world did not immediately acknowledge Bizet as a master and, apart from Carmen and the L'Arlésienne suite, few of his works were performed in the years immediately following his death. However, the 20th century saw increased interest. Don Procopio was revived in Monte Carlo in 1906; an Italian version of Les pêcheurs de perles was performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York on 13 November 1916, with Caruso in the leading tenor role, and it has since become a staple at many opera houses. After its first performance in Switzerland in 1935, the Symphony in C entered the concert repertory and has been recorded by, among many others, Sir Thomas Beecham. Excerpts from La coupe du roi de Thulé, edited by Winton Dean, were broadcast by the BBC on 12 July 1955, and Le docteur Miracle was revived in London on 8 December 1957 by the Park Lane Group. Vasco da Gama and Ivan IV have been recorded, as have numerous songs and the complete piano music. Carmen, after its lukewarm initial Paris run of 45 performances, became a worldwide popular success after performances in Vienna (1875) and London (1878). It has been hailed as the first opera of the verismo school, in which sordid and brutal subjects are emphasised, with art reflecting life—"not idealised life but life as actually lived".The music critic Harold C. Schonberg surmises that, had Bizet lived, he might have revolutionised French opera; as it is, verismo was taken up mainly by Italians, notably Puccini who, according to Dean, developed the idea "till it became threadbare". Bizet founded no specific school, though Dean names Chabrier and Ravel as composers influenced by him. Dean also suggests that a fascination with Bizet's tragic heroes—Frédéri in L'Arlésienne, José in Carmen—is reflected in Tchaikovsky's late symphonies, particularly the B minor "Pathetique". Macdonald writes that Bizet's legacy is limited by the shortness of his life and by the false starts and lack of focus that persisted until his final five years. "The spectacle of great works unwritten either because Bizet had other distractions, or because no one asked him to write them, or because of his premature death, is infinitely dispiriting, yet the brilliance and the individuality of his best music is unmistakable. It has greatly enriched a period of French music already rich in composers of talent and distinction."In Bizet's family circle, his father Adolphe died in 1886. Bizet's son Jacques committed suicide in 1922 after an unhappy love affair. Jean Reiter, Bizet's elder son, had a successful career as press director of Le Temps, became an Officer of the Legion of Honour, and died in 1939 at the age of 77. In 1886, Geneviève married Émile Straus, a rich lawyer; she became a famous Parisian society hostess and a close friend of, among others, Marcel Proust. She showed little interest in her first husband's musical legacy, made no effort to catalogue Bizet's manuscripts and gave many away as souvenirs. She died in 1926; in her will, she established a fund for a Georges Bizet prize, to be awarded annually to a composer under 40 who had "produced a remarkable work within the previous five years". Winners of the prize include Tony Aubin, Jean-Michel Damase, Henri Dutilleux, and Jean Martinon.

Notes
Passage 4:
Heather D. Gibson
Heather Denise Gibson (Greek: Χέδερ Ντενίζ Γκίμπσον) is a Scottish economist currently serving as Director-Advisor to the Bank of Greece (since 2011). She was the spouse of Euclid Tsakalotos, former Greek Minister of Finance.

Academic career
Before assuming her duties at the Bank of Greece and alternating child-rearing duties with her husband, Gibson worked at the University of Kent, where she published two volumes on international exchange rate mechanisms and wrote numerous articles on this and other topics, sometimes in cooperation with her husband, who was teaching at Kent at the time.

Personal life
Gibson first came to Greece in 1993, with her husband, with whom she took turns away from their respective economic studies to raise their three children while the other worked.The couple maintain two homes in Kifisia, along with an office in Athens and a vacation home in Preveza. In 2013, this proved detrimental to Tsakalotos and his party when his critics began calling him «αριστερός αριστοκράτης» (aristeros aristokratis, "aristocrat of the left"), while newspapers opposed to the Syriza party seized on his property holdings as a chance to accuse the couple of hypocrisy for enjoying a generous lifestyle in private while criticizing the "ethic of austerity" in public. One opposition newspaper published on the front page criticism reasoning that Tsakalotos own family wealth came from the same sort of investments in companies as made by financial institutions JP Morgan and BlackRock.

Works
Editor
Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece

Books
The Eurocurrency Markets, Domestic Financial Policy and International Instability (London, etc., Longman: 1989) ISBN 0312028261
International Finance: Exchange Rates and Financial Flows in the International Financial System (London, etc., Longman: 1996) ISBN 0582218136
Economic Transformation, Democratization and Integration into the European Union (London: Palgrave Macmillan: 2001) ISBN 9780333801222

Articles and papers
"Fundamentally Wrong: Market Pricing of Sovereigns and the Greek Financial Crisis," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 39(PB), pp. 405–419 (with Stephen G. & Tavlas, George S., 2014)
"Capital flows and speculative attacks in prospective EU member states" (with Euclid Tsakalotos, Economics of Transition Volume 12, Issue 3, pages 559–586, September 2004)
"A Unifying Framework for Analysing Offsetting Capital Flows and Sterilisation: Germany and the ERM" (with Sophocles Brissimis & Euclid Tsakalotos, International Journal of Finance & Economics, 2002, vol. 7, issue 1, pp. 63–78)
"Internal vs External Financing of Acquisitions: Do Managers Squander Retained Profits" (with Andrew Dickerson and Euclid Tsakalotos, Studies in Economics, 1996; Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 2000)
"Are Aggregate Consumption Relationships Similar Across the European Union" (with Alan Carruth & Euclid Tsakalotos, Regional Studies, Volume 33, Issue 1, 1999)
Takeover Risk and the Market for Corporate Control: The Experience of British Firms in the 1970s and 1980 (with Andrew Dickerson and Euclid Tsakalotos, 1998) PDF
"The Impact of Acquisitions on Company Performance: Evidence from a Large Panel of UK Firms" (with Andrew Dickerson and Euclid Tsakalotos, Oxford Economic Papers New Series, Vol. 49, No. 3 (Jul., 1997), pp. 344–361)
"Short-Termism and Underinvestment: The Influence of Financial Systems" (with Andrew Dickerson and Euclid Tsakalotos, The Manchester School of Economic & Social Studies, 1995, vol. 63, issue 4, pp. 351–67)
"Testing a Flow Model of Capital Flight in Five European Countries" (with Euclid Tsakalotos, The Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies, Volume 61, Issue 2, pp. 144–166, June 1993)
Full list of articles by Heather D Gibson. researchgate.net. Recovered 7 July 2015
Passage 5:
Maria Teresa, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
Maria Teresa (born María Teresa Mestre y Batista; 22 March 1956) is the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg as the wife of Grand Duke Henri, who acceded to the throne in 2000.

Early life and education
Maria Teresa was born on 22 March 1956 in Marianao, Havana, Cuba, to José Antonio Mestre y Álvarez (1926–1993) and wife  María Teresa Batista y Falla de Mestre (1928–1988), both from bourgeois families of Spanish descent. She is also the granddaughter of Agustín Batista y González de Mendoza, who was the founder of the Trust Company of Cuba, the most powerful Cuban bank prior to the Cuban Revolution.In October 1959, at the time of the Cuban Revolution, Maria Teresa Mestre’s parents left Cuba with their children, because the new government headed by Fidel Castro confiscated their properties. The family settled in New York City,  where as a young girl she was a pupil at Marymount School. From 1961 she carried on her studies at the Lycée Français de New York. In her childhood, Maria Teresa Mestre took ballet and singing courses. She practices skiing, ice-skating and water sports. She later lived in Santander, Spain, and in Geneva, Switzerland, where she became a Swiss citizen.In 1980, Maria Teresa graduated from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva with a degree in political sciences. While studying there, she met her future husband Henri of Luxembourg.

Social and humanitarian interests
Soon after her marriage, Maria Teresa and the then Hereditary Grand Duke Henri established The Prince Henri and Princess Maria Teresa Foundation to help those with special needs integrate fully into society. In 2001, she and her husband created The Grand Duke and Grand Duchess Foundation, launched upon the accession of the couple as the new Grand Duke and Duchess of Luxembourg. In 2004, the Grand Duke Henri and the Grand Duchess Maria Teresa Foundation was created after the merging of the two previous foundations.
In 1997, Maria Teresa was made a special ambassador for UNESCO, working to expand education for young girls and women and help to fight poverty.Since 2005, Maria Teresa has been the chairwoman of the international jury of the European Microfinance Award, which annually awards holders of microfinance and inclusive finance initiatives in developing countries. Also, since 2006, Maria Teresa has been honorary president of the LuxFLAG (Luxembourg Fund Labeling Agency), the first agency to label responsible microfinance investment funds around the world.On 19 April 2007, the Grand Duchess was appointed UNICEF Eminent Advocate for Children, in which role she has visited Brazil (2007), China (2008), and Burundi (2009).She is a member of the Honorary Board of the International Paralympic Committee and a patron of the Ligue Luxembourgeoise de Prévention et d’Action medico-sociales and SOS Villages d’Enfants Monde. The Grand Duchess and her husband Grand Duke Henri are the members of the Mentor Foundation (London), created under the patronage of the World Health Organization. She is also the president of the Luxembourg Red Cross and the Cancer Foundation. In 2016, she organized the first international forum on learning disabilities in Luxembourg.The Grand Duchess supports the UNESCO “Breaking the Poverty Cycle of Women” project in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan. The purpose of this project is to improve the living conditions of girls, women and their families. As honorary president of her own foundation, Grand Duchess Maria Teresa set up a project called Projet de la Main Tendue after visiting the Bujumbura prison in 2009 in Burundi. The purpose of this project is to liberate minor people from prison and to give them new opportunities for their future.
In October 2016, Maria Teresa accepted an invitation to join the eminent international Council of Patrons of the Asian University for Women (AUW) in Chittagong, Bangladesh. The university, which is the product of east-west foundational partnerships (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Open Society Foundation, IKEA Foundation, etc.) and regional cooperation, serves extraordinarily talented women from 15 countries across Asia and the Middle East.In 2019, Maria Teresa presented her initiative "Stand Speak Rise Up!" to end sexual violence in fragile environments, launched in cooperation with the Women’s Forum and with the support of the Luxembourg government. The conference is in partnership with the Dr. Denis Mukwege Foundation and We Are Not Weapons of War.In 2020 the Prime Minister of Luxembourg commissioned a report into the Cour le Grand Ducal following concerns over its working. The report found that up to 1/3 of employees had left since 2015 and that "The most important decisions in the field of personnel management, whether at the level of recruitment, assignment to the various departments or even at the dismissal level are taken by HRH the Grand Duchess.” Several newspaper reports at the time highlighted a 'culture of fear' around the Grand Duchess and "that no-one bar the Prime Minister dared confront her". The report also raised concerns about the use of public funds to pay for the Grand Duchess' personal website and that this had been prioritised over the Cour's own official website. There were also allegations that staff at the Court has been subject to physical abuse and these reports were investigated by the Luxembourg judicial police.
In February 2023 it was reported by several Luxembourg based media that the Grand Duchess had once again been accused of treating staff poorly during an outfit fitting in October 22. The incident even involved the Prime Minister of Luxembourg having to speak to the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess about the treatment of the staff and commissioning a report into it.

Family
Maria Teresa married Prince Henri of Luxembourg in a civil ceremony on 4 February 1981 and a religious ceremony on 14 February 1981, since Valentine's Day was their favourite holiday. The consent of the Grand Duke had been previously given on 7 November 1980. She received a bouquet of red roses and a sugarcane as a wedding gift from Cuban leader, Fidel Castro. The couple has five children: Guillaume, Hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg, Prince Félix of Luxembourg, Prince Louis of Luxembourg, Princess Alexandra of Luxembourg, and Prince Sébastien of Luxembourg, They were born at Maternity Hospital in Luxembourg City.

Honours
National
Luxembourg:
 Knight of the Order of the Gold Lion of the House of Nassau
 Grand Cross of the Order of Adolphe of Nassau

Foreign
Austria: Grand Star  of the Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria
 Belgium: Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold I
 Brazil: Grand Cross of the Order of the Southern Cross
 Denmark: Knight of the Order of the Elephant
 Finland: Grand Cross of the Order of the White Rose of Finland
 France: Grand Cross of the Order of National Merit
 Greece: Grand Cross of the Order of Beneficence
 Italy: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic
 Japan: Grand Cordon (Paulownia) of the Order of the Precious Crown
 Latvia: Commander Grand Cross of the Order of the Three Stars
 Netherlands:
Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Netherlands Lion
Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown
 Norway: Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Olav
Portugal-
 Portuguese Royal Family:
Dame Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Saint Isabel
 Portugal:
Grand Cross of the Order of Christ
Grand Cross of the Order of Saint James of the Sword
Grand Cross of the Order of Infante Henry
Grand Cross of the Order of Camões
 Romania: Grand Cross of the Order of the Star of Romania
 Spain: Dame Grand Cross of the Order of Charles III
 Sweden:
Member of the Royal Order of the Seraphim
Commander Grand Cross of the Royal Order of the Polar Star
Recipient of the 50th Birthday Badge Medal of King Carl XVI Gustaf

Footnotes
External links
 Media related to Maria Teresa, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg at Wikimedia Commons
Official website
The Mentor Foundation charity website
Passage 6:
Princess Auguste of Bavaria (1875–1964)
Princess Auguste of Bavaria (German: Auguste Maria Luise Prinzessin von Bayern; 28 April 1875 – 25 June 1964) was a member of the Bavarian Royal House of Wittelsbach and the spouse of Archduke Joseph August of Austria.

Birth and family
Auguste was born in Munich, Bavaria, the second child of Prince Leopold of Bavaria and his wife, Archduchess Gisela of Austria. She had one older sister, Princess Elisabeth Marie of Bavaria and two younger brothers, Prince Georg of Bavaria and Prince Konrad of Bavaria.

Marriage and issue
She married Joseph August, Archduke of Austria, on 15 November 1893 in Munich. The couple had six children;

Archduke Joseph Francis of Austria, born on 28 March 1895; died on 25 September 1957(1957-09-25) (aged 62)
Archduchess Gisela Auguste Anna Maria, born on 5 July 1897; died on 30 March 1901(1901-03-30) (aged 3)
Archduchess Sophie Klementine Elisabeth Klothilde Maria, born on 11 March 1899; died on 19 April 1978(1978-04-19) (aged 79)
Archduke Ladislaus Luitpold, born on 3 January 1901; died on 29 August 1946(1946-08-29) (aged 44)
Archduke Matthias Joseph Albrecht Anton Ignatius, born on 26 June 1904; died on 7 October 1905(1905-10-07) (aged 1)
Archduchess Magdalena Maria Raineria, born on 6 September 1909; died on 11 May 2000(2000-05-11) (aged 90)

Ancestry
World War I
On the outbreak of war with Italy in 1915, Augusta Maria Louise, though in her 40s and the mother of a son serving as an officer, went to the front with the cavalry regiment of which her husband, the Archduke Josef August, a corps commander, was honorary colonel, and served a common soldier, wearing a saber and riding astride, until the end of the war.
Passage 7:
Gertrude of Bavaria
Gertrude of Bavaria (Danish and German: Gertrud; 1152/55–1197) was Duchess of Swabia as the spouse of Duke Frederick IV, and Queen of Denmark as the spouse of King Canute VI.
Gertrude was born to Henry the Lion of Bavaria and Saxony and Clementia of Zähringen in either 1152 or 1155. She was married to Frederick IV, Duke of Swabia, in 1166, and became a widow in 1167. In 1171 she was engaged and in February 1177 married to Canute of Denmark in Lund. The couple lived the first years in Skåne. On 12 May 1182, they became king and queen. She did not have any children. During her second marriage, she chose to live in chastity and celibacy with her husband. Arnold of Lübeck remarked of their marriage, that her spouse was: "The most chaste one, living thus his days with his chaste spouse" in eternal chastity.
Passage 8:
Marie-Louise Coidavid
Queen Marie Louise Coidavid (1778 – 11 March 1851) was the Queen of the Kingdom of Haiti 1811–20 as the spouse of Henri Christophe.

Early life
Marie-Louise was born into a free black family; her father was the owner of Hotel de la Couronne, Cap-Haïtien. Henri Christophe was a slave purchased by her father. Supposedly, he earned enough money in tips from his duties at the hotel that he was able to purchase his freedom before the Haitian Revolution. They married in Cap-Haïtien in 1793, having had a relationship with him from the year prior. They had four children: François Ferdinand (born 1794), Françoise-Améthyste (d. 1831), Athénaïs (d. 1839) and Victor-Henri.
At her spouse's new position in 1798, she moved to the Sans-Souci Palace. During the French invasion, she and her children lived underground until 1803.

Queen
In 1811, Marie-Louise was given the title of queen upon the creation of the Kingdom of Haiti. Her new status gave her ceremonial tasks to perform, ladies-in-waiting, a secretary and her own court. She took her position seriously, and stated that the title "given to her by the nation" also gave her responsibilities and duties to perform. She served as the hostess of the ceremonial royal court life performed at the Sans-Souci Palace. She did not involve herself in the affairs of state. She was given the position of Regent should her son succeed her spouse while still being a minor.  However, as her son became of age before the death of his father, this was never to materialize.After the death of the king in 1820, she remained with her daughters Améthyste and Athénaïs at the palace until they were escorted from it by his followers together with his corpse; after their departure, the palace was attacked and plundered. Marie-Louise and her daughters were given the property Lambert outside Cap. She was visited by president Jean Pierre Boyer, who offered her his protection; he denied the spurs of gold she gave him, stating that he was the leader of poor people. They were allowed to settle in Port-au-Prince. Marie-Louise was described as calm and resigned, but her daughters, especially Athénaïs, were described as vengeful.

Exile
The Queen was in exile for 30 years. In August 1821, the former queen left Haiti with her daughters under the protection of the British admiral Sir Home Popham, and travelled to London. There were rumours that she was searching for the money, three million, deposited by her spouse in Europe. Whatever the case, she did live the rest of her life without economic difficulties. The English climate and pollution during the Industrial Revolution was determintal to Améthyste's health, and eventually they decided to leave.In 1824, Marie-Louise and her daughters moved in Pisa in Italy, where they lived for the rest of their lives, Améthyste dying shortly after their arrival and Athénaïs in 1839. They lived discreetly for the most part, but were occasionally bothered by fortune hunters and throne claimers who wanted their fortune. Shortly before her death, she wrote to Haiti for permission to return. She never did, however, before she died in Italy. She is buried in the church of San Donnino. A historical marker was installed in front of the church on April 23, 2023 to commemorate the Queen, her daughter and her sister.

See also
Marie-Claire Heureuse Félicité
Adélina Lévêque
Passage 9:
Walter Ulfig
Walter Ulfig was a German composer of film scores.

Selected filmography
Das Meer (1927)
Venus im Frack (1927)
Svengali (1927)
Bigamie (1927)
Homesick (1927)
The Awakening of Woman (1927)
The Famous Woman (1927)
Alpine Tragedy (1927)
The Strange Case of Captain Ramper (1927)
Assassination (1927)
Queen Louise (1927)
Homesick (1927)
Das Schicksal einer Nacht (1927)
The Hunt for the Bride (1927)
The Orlov (1927)
Serenissimus and the Last Virgin (1928)
Mariett Dances Today (1928))
The Woman from Till 12 (1928)
The Beloved of His Highness (1928)
The Schorrsiegel Affair (1928)
It Attracted Three Fellows (1928)
Miss Chauffeur (1928)
The King of Carnival (1928)
The Weekend Bride (1928)
Honeymoon (1928)
Spring Awakening (1929)
The Right of the Unborn (1929)
The Heath Is Green (1932)
Höllentempo (1933)
The Two Seals (1934)
Pappi (1934)
Mädchenräuber (1936)

Bibliography
Jung, Uli & Schatzberg, Walter. Beyond Caligari: The Films of Robert Wiene. Berghahn Books, 1999.

External links
Walter Ulfig at IMDb