Les Pêcheurs de Perles

From The Metropolitan Opera website: 

Few operas can match the sheer lyric beauty of Bizet’s youthful The Pearl Fishers. Critics at the time were not in favor of it but the audience was swept up in the ravishing score tinged with the allure of a mythical South Asian setting. The drama itself remains within the conventional standards of the day, with a love triangle complicated by the true friendship of the two men involved in it.

Although not performed frequently, the opera successfully stands on its own when appreciated for its unique atmosphere, rather than compared to the composer’s later masterpiece, Carmen, or held up to modern notions of dramatic plausibility.