When Georges Bizet finished composing his opera “Carmen” in the summer of 1874, he was full of optimism about its prospects. “I have written a work that is all clarity and vivacity, full of color and ...

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The 150th anniversary of Bizet’s death this year has not received much attention. Only aged 36, Bizet had ...

Few operas are performed more than Georges Bizet’s Carmen; none are better loved. It was his magnum opus and a glimpse of the direction that music might have taken had he lived longer. Bizet died of a ...

Arguably the most popular of all operas, Carmen is especially beloved of Hong Kong audiences. Fittingly, in the year that marks the 150th anniversary of both the opera and of the death of its composer ...

"Sweet money, you'll make my heart happy," young Toby suddenly exults, to the rhythm of a light waltz. His mad hope contrasts with the terrible predicament he has been addressing since the beginning ...

It’s regularly voted the most popular opera in the world, but Georges Bizet had no idea that his final work would become such a triumph, as Martin Buzacott explains. Prosper Mérimée was a French ...

Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers was much maligned for years. Writing in Le Figaro after its 1863 premiere, Benjamin Jouvin dismissed it as a ‘noisy orgy’, declaring: ‘There were neither fishermen in the ...