Ernest Guiraud was an American-born French composer and music teacher. He is best known for writing the traditional orchestral recitatives used for Bizet's opera Carmen and for Offenbach's opera Les contes d'Hoffmann.
Ernest Guiraud, photograph by G. Camus, c. 1890.
Georges Bizet was a French composer of the Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, which has become one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertoire.
Bizet photographed by Étienne Carjat (1875)
Part of the Paris Conservatoire, where Bizet studied from 1848 to 1857 (photographed in 2009)
The Villa Medici, the official home of the French Académie in Rome since 1803
The Théâtre Historique in Paris, one of the homes of the Théâtre Lyrique company, pictured in 1862