Escamillo, who follows her to the smugglers’ lair, and is nearly killed by the infuriated Jose.  Micaela also finds her way up to the camp, and persuades Jose to go home with her and tend the last moments of his dying mother.  The last act takes place outside the Plaza de Toros at Seville.  Jose has returned to plead once more with Carmen, but her love has grown cold and she rejects him disdainfully.  After a scene of bitter recrimination he kills her, while the shouts of the people inside the arena acclaim the triumph of Escamillo.  ‘Carmen’ was coldly received at first.  Its passionate force was miscalled brutality, and the suspicion of German influence which Bizet’s clever use of guiding themes excited, was in itself enough to alienate the sympathies of the average Frenchman in the early seventies.  Since its production ‘Carmen’ has gradually advanced in general estimation, and is now one of the most popular operas in the modern repertory.  It is unnecessary to do more than allude to its many beauties, the nervous energy of the more declamatory parts, the brilliant and expressive orchestration, the extraordinarily clever use of Spanish rhythms, and the finished musicianship displayed upon every page of the score.  The catalogue of Bizet’s works is completed by ’Don Procopio,’ an imitation of Italian opera buffa dating from his student days in Rome.  It was unearthed and produced at Monte Carlo in 1906.  It is a bright and lively little work, but has no pretensions to original value.  Bizet’s early death deprived the French school of one of its brightest ornaments.  To him is largely due the development of opera comique which has taken place within the last twenty years, a development which has taken it almost to the confines of grand opera.

Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), though German by birth, may fitly be mentioned here, since the greater part of his life was spent in Paris, and his music was more typically French than that of any of his Gallic rivals.  His innumerable operas bouffes scarcely come within the scope of this work, but his posthumous opera comique, ’Les Contes d’Hoffman (1881), is decidedly more ambitious in scope, and still holds the stage by virtue of its piquant melody and clever musicianship.  In Germany, where ‘Les Contes d’ Hoffmann’ is still very popular under the name of ‘Hoffmann’s Erzaehlungen,’ it is usually performed in a revised version, which differs considerably from the French original as regards plot and dialogue, though the music is practically the same.  Hoffmann, the famous story-teller, is the hero of the opera, which, after a prologue in a typically German beer-cellar, follows his adventures through three scenes, each founded upon one of his famous tales.  In the first we see him fascinated by the mechanical doll Olympia, in the second he is at the feet of the Venetian courtesan Giulietta, while in the third we assist at his futile endeavours to save the youthful singer Antonia from the clutches of the mysterious Dr. Miracle.