It is ironic that Georges Bizet is forever associated with Spain for having put on stage the archetypal femme fatale in the Spanish gypsy Carmen. For, as has often been pointed out, he never went to Spain, and he showed little interest in the country or its music until he committed himself to composing the opera two years before his early death in 1875. During his professional career as a composer the furthest from Paris he ever travelled was to Baden-Baden, to Brussels, and to Bordeaux. But before he settled into the grind of making a living in Paris he had the opportunity, as winner of the Prix de Rome, to spend nearly three years in Italy, discovering the country and its heritage, learning a composer's self-discipline, making friends and growing up.

As it happens, the period of thirty-three months in 1857–1860 he spent in Italy is the best documented part of his life, since his fortnightly letters to his parents have been preserved, along with fragmentary journals that record his original trip from Paris to Rome and two later excursions to other Italian cities. After his return to Paris in 1860 the record is quite different, and a good deal less personal. From the fifteen years that were left to him we have a reasonably close record of his successes and disappointments, of operas commissioned, abandoned, composed, performed or forgotten, of friendships, and of the unending necessity to keep his head above water by accepting work as a piano teacher or as the arranger of other composers’ works. We have a miscellaneous stock of letters to a variety of correspondents, and his doings were sometimes reported in the press. But he was never in his lifetime recognised as the major voice that Carmen ultimately proved him to be, and the press treated him as one of many young French composers vying for attention and scarcely likely to rival the great names of the past. Many of his works came into existence without any mention in the press, let alone fanfare. Although he could play anything at all on the piano, he never pursued the career of virtuoso, and his personal life was entirely without sensational elements. His career was far from dull, yet it lacked the joy and the adventurous colour that marked his time in Italy.