The young composer was already aware of his gifts and of the danger inherent in his facility. “I want to do nothing chic,” he wrote from Rome, “I want to have ideas before beginning a piece, and that is not how I worked in Paris.” In Rome he set himself to study Robert Schumann, Carl Maria von Weber, Mendelssohn, and Gounod, who was regarded as more than half a German composer by the admirers of the fashionable French composer Daniel Auber.

Mozart’s music affects me too deeply and makes me really unwell. Certain things by Rossini have the same effect; but oddly enough Beethoven and Meyerbeer never go so far as that. As for Haydn, he has sent me to sleep for some time past.

Instead of spending his statutory third year in Germany, he chose to stay on in Rome, where he collected impressions that were eventually collected to form a second C major symphony (Roma), first performed in 1869. An Italian-text opera, Don Procopio, written at this time, shows Donizetti’s style, and the ode Vasco de Gama is largely modeled on Gounod and Meyerbeer.

When Bizet returned to Paris in the autumn of 1860, he was accompanied by his friend Ernest Guiraud, who was to be responsible for popularizing Bizet’s work after his death. In spite of very decided opinions, Bizet was still immature in his outlook on life (youthfully cynical, for instance, in his attitude toward women) and was plagued by an artistic conscience that accused him of preferring the facilely charming in music to the truly great. He was even ashamed of his admiration for the operas of his Italian contemporary Giuseppe Verdi and longed for the faith and vision of the typical Romantic artist, which he could never achieve. “I should write better music,” he wrote in October 1866 to his friend and pupil Edmond Galabert, “if I believed a lot of things which are not true.” In fact the skepticism and materialism of the dominant Positivist philosophy persistently troubled Bizet; it may well have been an inability to reconcile his intelligence with his emotions that caused him to embark on so many operatic projects that he never brought to a conclusion. The kind of drama demanded by the French operatic public of the day could very seldom engage his whole personality. The weaknesses in the first two operas that he completed after his return to Paris are a result not so much of the composer’s excessive regard for public taste as of his flagging interest in the drama. Neither Les Pêcheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers; first performed 1863) nor La Jolie Fille de Perth (1867; The Fair Maid of Perth) had a libretto capable of eliciting or focusing the latent musical and dramatic powers that Bizet eventually proved to possess. The chief interest of Les Pêcheurs de perles lies in its exotic Oriental setting and the choral writing, which is more individual than that of the lyrical music, over which Gounod still casts a long shadow. Although La Jolie Fille de Perth bears only a skeletal resemblance to Sir Walter Scott’s novel, the characterization is stronger (the gypsy Mab and the “Danse bohémienne” anticipate Carmen), and even such conventional features as the night patrol, the drinking chorus, the ballroom scene, and the heroine’s madness exhibit a freshness and elegance of language that raise the work unmistakably above the general level of French opera of the day.

Although warmly acknowledged by Berlioz, Gounod, Saint-Saëns, and Liszt, Bizet was still obliged during these years to undertake the musical hackwork that only the most successful French composers were able to avoid. Stories of his moodiness and readiness to pick a quarrel suggest a profound inner uncertainty, and the cynicism and vulnerability of adolescence hardly yielded to a mature emotional attitude of life until his marriage, on June 3, 1869, to Geneviève Halévy, the daughter of the composer of the opera La Juive (1835; The Jewess). Between his engagement in 1867 and his marriage, Bizet was himself aware of undergoing “an extraordinary change . . . both as artist and man. I am purifying myself and becoming better.” Adverse criticism of certain features of La Jolie Fille de Perth prompted him to break once and for all with “the school of flonflons, trills and falsehoods” and to concentrate his attention on the two elements that had always been the strongest features of his music—the creation of exotic atmosphere and the concern with dramatic truth. The first of these was brilliantly exemplified in the one-act Djamileh (1872), original enough to be accused of “exceeding even Richard Wagner in bizarrerie and strangeness”; and the second in the incidental music for Alphonse Daudet’s play L’Arlésienne (1872), which is marked by a delicacy and tenderness quite new to his music. Besides the happiness of his marriage, which was crowned by the birth of a son in July of this same year, his letters show that he was deeply stirred by the events of the Franco-Prussian War, and, during the siege of Paris, he served in the national guard.

Via britannica.com

Zvulun directed over 15 new productions in his home company in Atlanta, including Dead Man Walking, Flying Dutchman, Soldier Songs, Silent Night, Maria de Buenos Aires, La Boheme, Madama Butterfly, Lucia di Lammermoor, Magic Flute, and Eugene Onegin to name but a few. During Tomer’s tenure, the company’s fundraising has tripled, resulting in twice the number of productions presented annually. His focus on innovation has garnered national attention and resulted in a Harvard Business School case study chronicling The Atlanta Opera’s turnaround, an International Opera Awards nomination, an ArtsATL Luminary Award, and an invitation to deliver a TEDx Talk about innovation in opera.

His upcoming projects include a new Rigoletto in Houston; a new Salome in Atlanta and Kansas City; revivals of his acclaimed production of Eugene Onegin in Montreal, Seattle and Palm Beach; Silent Night at Utah Opera; and Madama Butterfly and Glory Denied in Atlanta. He is currently working on developing a world premiere based on Anne Frank’s Diary and Sensorium Ex, a world premiere based on a story about artificial intelligence.

Tomer’s recent shows have traveled across continents, receiving critical acclaim for their striking visuals and cinematic quality. Some of them included The Flying Dutchman (Houston, Cincinnati, Atlanta), Dinner at Eight (Wexford Festival, Minnesota Opera), Eugene Onegin (Seattle, Atlanta, Detroit, Kansas City), Lucia di Lammermoor (Seattle, Atlanta, Cleveland) Silent Night (Wexford, Atlanta, Glimmerglass, Washington, Austin), Soldier Songs (Atlanta, San Diego), Dead Man Walking (New Orleans, Atlanta), La Bohème (Seattle, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Atlanta, Dallas), Lucrezia Borgia (Buenos Aires), Gianni Schicchi (Juilliard, IVAI Tel Aviv), L’heaure Espagnole (Juilliard), Magic Flute (Cincinnati, Atlanta, Indiana University), Don Giovanni (Wolf Trap, Cincinnati), Die Fledermaus (Dallas, Kansas City), Falstaff (Wolf Trap, Des Moines), Rigoletto (Boston, Atlanta, Omaha, Charlotte), Madama Butterfly (Atlanta, Castleton Festival, New Orleans), Tosca (National Theatre Panama, Atlanta) and Semele (Seattle).

Tomer Zvulun was born and raised in Israel, attended the open University in Tel Aviv and Harvard Business School and makes his home in Atlanta.