Type: Opera
Composer: George Bizet
Program: The Pearl Fishers
Location: The Capitol Theater, Toulouse, France
Orchestra: Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse
Conductor: Victorien Vanoosten
Soloists: Jean-Francois Borras, Florian Sempey, Julie Fuchs
Year: 2024

Although The Pearl Fishers is an opera with lyrical beauty and romantic melancholy, it has an adventurous, theatrical energy that is playful, sensual, and occasionally unruly. Written by a very young Georges Bizet more than a decade before Carmen, the work blends exotic fantasy, friendship drama, forbidden love, and large choral spectacle. The title refers to the community of pearl divers at the center of the story, set in a highly romanticized version of ancient Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).