In days when there was no opportunity to get to know music better by repeated listening with a radio or CD, playing through it oneself after hearing a piece at a concert was the only option. This explains the proliferation of fantasias, paraphrase settings and arrangements of popular operatic melodies in the 19th Century: these were a regular feature of musical life, both in the concert hall and in households. The popularity of Carmen by French composer Georges Bizet, which stood at the top of t...