Au fond du temple saint (Les pêcheurs de perles)

Léon Carvalho commissioned the opera under a scheme obliging the Théâtre Lyrique to stage a work by a Prix de Rome laureate; Bizet was twenty-four and had a few months to write it. Les pêcheurs de perles opened on 30 September 1863 and ran for eighteen performances. Most Paris critics were dismissive; Berlioz was among the few who defended it. It was not staged again in France until 1886, eleven years after Bizet's death, and the versions circulating then altered both the ending and the tenor-baritone duet. The original text was recovered only in the twentieth century.