 Bizet 's early one @-@ act opera Le docteur Miracle provides the first clear signs of his promise in this genre , its sparkling music including , according to Dean , " many happy touches of parody , scoring and comic characterisation " . Newman perceives evidence of Bizet 's later achievements in many of his earliest works : " [ A ] gain and again we light upon some touch or other in them that only a musician with a dramatic root of the matter in him could have achieved . " Until Carmen , however , Bizet was not essentially an innovator in the musical theatre . He wrote most of his operas in the traditions of Italian and French opera established by such as Donizetti , Rossini , Berlioz , Gounod and Thomas . Macdonald suggests that , technically , he surpassed all of these , with a feeling for the human voice that compares with that of Mozart . 
