After mention of the obscurity of winners of the Pulitzer Prize, I thought
winners of the Prix de Rome might be worth a look.  The New Grove referred
me to Grove 5 by which it means the 1954 edition which should perhaps be
now called The Old Grove.  This lists winners from 1803 to 1951.  A quick
check via Alta Vista threw up some interesting sites but not anything
about whether the prize is still awarded - perhaps one of our France-based
members knows.  The prize was (is?) awarded by the Academie des Beaux-Arts
in Paris and entitled the winner to four years at the Villa Medici in Rome
as a guest of the French government.  The competition was originally for a
work for one singer and orchestra, later one male and one female and
eventually three singers.

The full list is not worth reproducing, but winners include such people
as Herold, Halevy, Berlioz, Gounod, Bizet, Massenet, Debussy, Charpentier,
Bloch, Rabaud, Schmitt, Paray, Lily Boulanger and Dutilleux.  As Grove
notes:  "It is interesting and somewhat depressing to note how many names
this list contains of composers whose careers came to nothing (a large
number are not of sufficient interest even to be given short entries in
this dictionary).  On the other hand, the absence of many of the most
distinguished French composers is equally striking."

One detail:  the Bizet work was Clovis et Clotilde.  I have a vague memory
of reading a review of a recording of this but don't remember when or
where.  Has anyone heard of it?

Richard Pennycuick
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