Editing Georges Bizet (section)

===Dramatic works===
[[File:Carmen at the Met1915.jpg|thumb|Publicity shots for the ''Carmen'' revival at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in January 1915, with [[Enrico Caruso]] and [[Geraldine Farrar]]. Caruso is centre in the upper row, Farrar top left and bottom right.]]
Bizet's early one-act opera ''Le docteur Miracle'' provides the first clear signs of his promise in this genre, its sparkling music including, according to Dean, "many happy touches of parody, scoring and comic characterisation".<ref name= D750/> Newman perceives evidence of Bizet's later achievements in many of his earliest works: "[A]gain and again we light upon some touch or other in them that only a musician with a dramatic root of the matter in him could have achieved."<ref>Newman, p. 428</ref> Until ''Carmen'', however, Bizet was not essentially an innovator in the musical theatre. He wrote most of his operas in the traditions of Italian and French opera established by such as [[Gaetano Donizetti|Donizetti]], Rossini, Berlioz, Gounod, and Thomas. Macdonald suggests that, technically, he surpassed all of these, with a feeling for the human voice that compares with that of Mozart.<ref name= OMO/>

In ''Don Procopio'', Bizet followed the stock devices of Italian opera as typified by Donizetti in ''[[Don Pasquale]]'', a work which it closely resembles. However, the familiar idiom is interspersed with original touches in which Bizet's fingerprints emerge unmistakably.<ref name= OMO/><ref>Dean (1980), p. 752</ref> In his first significant opera, ''[[Les pêcheurs de perles]]'', Bizet was hampered by a dull libretto and a laborious plot; nevertheless, the music in Dean's view rises at times "far above the level of contemporary French opera".<ref name= D754/> Its many original flourishes include the introduction to the [[cavatina]]'' Comme autrefois dans la nuit sombre'' played by two [[French horns]] over a cello background, an effect which in the words of analyst [[Hervé Lacombe]], "resonates in the memory like a fanfare lost in a distant forest".<ref>Lacombe, p. 178</ref> While the music of ''Les pêcheurs'' is atmospheric and deeply evocative of the opera's Eastern setting, in ''La jolie fille de Perth'', Bizet made no attempt to introduce Scottish colour or mood,<ref name= OMO/> though the scoring includes highly imaginative touches such as a separate band of woodwind and strings during the opera's Act III seduction scene.<ref>Dean (1965), pp. 184–185</ref>

From Bizet's unfinished works, Macdonald highlights ''La coupe du roi de Thulé'' as giving clear signs of the power that would reach a pinnacle in ''Carmen'' and suggests that had ''Clarissa Harlowe'' and ''Grisélidis'' been completed, Bizet's legacy would have been "infinitely richer".<ref name= OMO/> As Bizet moved away from the accepted musical conventions of French opera, he encountered critical hostility. In the case of ''Djamileh'', the accusation of "Wagnerism" was raised again,<ref>Curtiss, p. 325</ref> as audiences struggled to understand the score's originality; many found the music pretentious and monotonous, lacking in both rhythm and melody.<ref name= D758/> By contrast, modern critical opinion as expressed by Macdonald is that ''Djamileh'' is "a truly enchanting piece, full of inventive touches, especially of chromatic colour."<ref name= OMO/>

Ralph P. Locke, in his study of ''Carmen's'' origins, draws attention to Bizet's successful evocation of Andalusian Spain.<ref name= Locke/> Grout, in his ''History of Western Music'', praises the music's extraordinary rhythmic and melodic vitality, and Bizet's ability to obtain the maximum dramatic effect in the most economical fashion.<ref>Grout and Palisca, p. 615</ref> Among the opera's early champions were [[Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky|Tchaikovsky]], [[Johannes Brahms|Brahms]], and particularly Wagner, who commented: "Here, thank God, at last for a change is somebody with ideas in his head."<ref name= Schon36>Schonberg (Vol. II), pp. 36–37</ref> Another champion of the work was [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], who claimed to know it by heart; "It is music that makes no pretensions to depth, but it is delightful in its simplicity, so unaffected and sincere".<ref name= Schon>Schonberg (Vol. II), pp. 34–35</ref> By broad consent, ''Carmen'' represents the fulfilment of Bizet's development as a master of music drama and the culmination of the genre of [[opéra comique]].<ref name= OMO/><ref name= D760>Dean (1980), pp. 760–761</ref>