Carmen

When the curtain rose for the first performance of the new critical edition of Georges Bizet's masterpiece at the Frankfurt Opera on 7 March 1992, it represented a milestone in the perception of this opera, one of the most frequently performed in the international repertoire.
Editor Robert Didion and translator Joseph Heinzelmann have solved the basic textual issues that have dogged the opera since its inception. After exact philological analyses of all available manuscript sources, especially the piano score and the printed editions of the libretto published under the original authors' supervision, they have put together a correct text of the work which has all later additions and omissions eliminated and 'corresponds to the version which the opera came up with in the wake of its first scenic rehearsals and which was the only one sanctioned by the authors, by the composer as well as by the librettists' [quoted from the preface of the score].
Since then, this critical edition of Carmen has become the established performance reference throughout the world, with a large number of stage productions.