 In this climate, the operas of the French-born composer Hector Berlioz struggled to gain a hearing.Berlioz's epic masterpiece "Les Troyens", the culmination of the Gluckian tradition, was not given a full performance for almost a hundred years after it was written.In the second half of the 19th century, Jacques Offenbach dominated the new genre of operetta with witty and cynical works such as "Orphée aux enfers"; Charles Gounod scored a massive success with "Faust"; and Georges Bizet composed "Carmen", probably the most famous French opera of all.