Although almost unanimously condemned by contemporary Parisian critics for its overt sexuality and graphic final scene Carmen ultimately reached the public in a way that perhaps no other opera has. Bizet's aim (with Meilhac and Halevy who wrote the libretto) had been to transform the flaccid moralistic bourgeois genre of opéra comique into a more sophisticated type of staged work and he seems to have suceeded in Carmen. Each character has a musical significance and a unique expressive idiom the ultimate example being the dangerous exotic sensual Carmen herself depicted by an exotic and sinewy chromatic motive that also implies the insurmountable power of fate. Ina classic plot device she is contrasted with the 'good girl' of the opera Micaela whose main aria is set in the ternary form of the elevated bel canto French Grand Opera aria to imply her traditionally 'ladylike' retiring nature. Don José's musical styles reflect different levels in his descent from dutiful soldier to the underworld of obsession. This is the Schirmer edition of the Vocal Score with an English translation by Ruth and Thomas Martin.

Tchaikovsky wrote Eugene Onegin in 1878 using a libretto by Konstantin Shilovsky based on the epic poem by Pushkin. Flirtatious Olga and shy bookish Tatyana are sisters Olga being happily engaged to Lenski. One day Lenski arrives with a friend Eugene Onegin and Tatyana is smitten. She writes him a letter but he rudely rebuffs her and she is devastated. At the dance that night he dances with Olga making Lenski jealous also. They fight a duel in which Lenski is killed.Six years later Tatyana has become a beauty and married Prince Gremin unbeknownst to Onegin who has become a wanderer. Onegin enters Gremin’s house for a party seesTatyana falls in love and pleads with her to come with him but Tatyana though confessing she still loves him refuses him she is married. Eugene is left alone and heartbroken.This is the Schirmer edition of the Vocal Score in an English translation by Henry Reese.