 In Don Procopio Bizet followed the stock devices of Italian opera as typified by Donizetti in Don Pasquale , a work which it closely resembles . However , the familiar idiom is interspersed with original touches in which Bizet 's fingerprints emerge unmistakably . In his first significant opera , Les pêcheurs de perles , Bizet was hampered by a dull libretto and a laborious plot ; nevertheless , the music in Dean 's view rises at times " far above the level of contemporary French opera " . Its many original flourishes include the introduction to the cavatina Comme autrefois dans la nuit sombre played by two French horns over a cello background , an effect which in the words of analyst Hervé Lacombe , " resonates in the memory like a fanfare lost in a distant forest " . While the music of Les pêcheurs is atmospheric and deeply evocative of the opera 's Eastern setting , in La jolie fille de Perth Bizet made no attempt to introduce Scottish colour or mood , though the scoring includes highly imaginative touches such as a separate band of woodwind and strings during the opera 's Act III seduction scene . 
