Geneviève Halévy [SEP] father
Geneviève Halévy
Geneviève Halévy, later Geneviève Bizet and Geneviève Straus (Paris, 26 February 1849 – 1926), was a French salonnière. She inspired Marcel Proust as a model for the Duchesse de Guermantes and Odette de Crécy in "À la recherche du temps perdu".
Life.
Geneviève Halévy was the daughter of the composer Jacques-Fromental Halévy and his wife Léonie (née Rodrigues-Henriques), both Jewish. Geneviève Halévy's youth was sad: She lost her father when she was 13 years old
, her elder sister when she was 15 years old, and her mother suffered from periods of mental instability. In 1869, she married Georges Bizet, pupil of her father, and gave birth in 1871 to their son Jacques, who became a school friend of Marcel Proust. Bizet died suddenly of a heart attack in 1875. Geneviève moved to live with her uncle, Léon Halévy, and opened a salon for her cousin Ludovic Halévy, where she helped him in receiving the artistic society of the time. This was known