Georges Bizet

Bizet married Geneviève Halévy in 1869 but the marriage was cut short when he died in 1875 from a heart attack at age 36, only three months after Carmen's opening. Halévy is shown in the lower image.

This painting below of Halévy is by Jules-Élie Delaunay from 1876 or 1878, where she is shown in mourning clothes. It is one of my favorite paintings, quietly tucked away in the Musée d'Orsay.

Their son, Jacques, was three when his father died. During his high school years in the 1880's, Jacques was a friend of Marcel Proust who propositioned him to have sex with him. Tactfully, Jacques declined. Proust's mother was horrified at the general turn of events and banned them from seeing each other. Jacques's mother, on the other hand, would become inspiration for Proust's duchesse de Guermantes in À la recherche du temps perdu. Life as opera...

I'm reminded of the painting above by this portrait (cropped) of Polish painter Anna Bilińska, from a few years later. She is in mourning after the death of her father and I find it equally moving.