Georges Bizet was twenty-four when he wrote Les Pêcheurs de perles, which was first performed at the Théâtre-Lyrique in Paris, in September 1863. This was twelve years before Bizet’s masterwork, Carmen, which premièred in the year of his death. The first opera was immediately popular. Berlioz reviewed it warmly. As it happens, this was Berlioz’s last review. Lucrative royalties from Les Troyens, which premièred at the Théâtre-Lyrique five weeks after The Pearl Fishers (not a bad season for the house, really) enabled him to give up journalism: ‘deliverance’ for this self-declared ‘unhappy feuilletonist’.

No complete score of The Pearl Fishers survives, and it has been subjected to endless unauthorised cuts and interpolations. But this precocious lyrical work is rarely missing from most opera company’s repertoire for any length of time. The greatest sopranos, tenors, and baritones have recorded the major arias and the famous duet. Caruso himself recorded Nadir’s aria twice and appeared in a starry revival for the Metropolitan Opera in 1916.