Social critic: The operas composed by Bizet and Verdi are nineteenth-century European creations, reflecting the attitudes and values in France and Italy at the end of that century  Several recent studies impugn these operas on the grounds that they reinforce in our society many stereotypes about women
Nineteenth-century French and Italian images of women are quite different from contemporary North American images of women.
 But only a small minority of contemporary North Americans, namely opera lovers, have had any significant exposure to these works