Georges Bizet

Georges Bizet was a prodigy at the Paris Conservatoire, entering at nine and winning the Prix de Rome at eighteen. His early stage works, including Les pêcheurs de perles and Djamileh, found only modest success, and it was Carmen, with its unromanticised depiction of working-class passion and violence, that became his masterpiece, though its 1875 premiere was received coolly, judged shocking by parts of the Paris press. Bizet died of a heart attack three months later, at thirty-six, never knowing Carmen would go on to become one of the most performed operas in the world.