Three opera composers of the highest class died before they were forty. Mozart’s oeuvre is so rich in variety and accomplished in technique that one could not wish for more: his achievement seems miraculously complete. But Bellini and Bizet each left only one outright masterpiece – Norma and Carmen respectively – alongside a pile of works that are immature, fragmentary or compromised. Listening to their music and reflecting on their truncated lives is tantalising and frustrating; one can only speculate that another decade would have allowed them to progress much further and perhaps change the course of the art form.

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