The Queen of Spades (opera)
When Tchaikovsky went to Paris in 1876, he saw Bizet’s opera Carmen.  He liked the story's themes of love and bad fate.  The idea of fate is important to the opera Carmen and also to Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades.  Tchaikovsky wrote some of his greatest music in this opera.  Some of it is very graceful, and is similar to Mozart.  In other places it is very romantic, with harmonies that he had learned by studying the operas of Wagner.