'One-hit' operas litter the repertoire. One thinks of the aria 'Ebben? Ne andrò lontana', which every soprano worth her salt has sung in concert and many have recorded. The aria was the thread running through the cult move, Diva (1981), sung in a concert scene in the film by the soprano Wilhelmenia Fernandez, not a particularly well-known singer. The eminently better-known Kiri Te Kanawa sang the same aria on the soundtrack for the Merchant Ivory film A Room with a View (1985). But how many people have heard of, let alone seen, Alfredo Catalani's opera, La Wally (1892), from which the aria comes?

Bizet's early opera The Pearlfishers has been in danger of being included in this list through the ubiquity of the tenor–baritone duet 'Au fond du temple saint', another piece of classical music given enormous currency through a film, in this case Peter Weir's Gallipoli (1981). This duet frequently tops surveys of the best-loved pieces of classical music. But the opera is far from falling into the one-hit category, and is filled with memorable music. However, it cannot be denied that it has been completely overshadowed by Bizet's final opera, Carmen (1875), considered by some as the greatest opera of them all. But The Pearlfishers contains many of the elements that make Carmen such a masterpiece. Like Mozart and Schubert, the early death of Bizet at thirty-six, in 1875, is one of the most tantalising musical 'what ifs'?