The only Bizet work in which Björling appeared on stage was Djamileh, a charming opéra comique (with spoken dialogue), first performed in 1872. In the 1933 revival in Stockholm he played the role of Haroun, a rich, bored young Egyptian whose emotional fickleness is cured by the resourceful and seductive Djamileh. It is a typical French lyric tenor role with a relatively high tessitura; the twenty-two-year-old Björling was praised for his tasteful singing, “brilliant in the big numbers,” but was taken to task for his unripe acting: “The spoken scenes sounded frightful,” wrote Kurt Atterberg.

These critical reservations help us understand why Björling never sang Don José on stage, even though Carmen clocked up more performances than any other work at the Royal Opera during his career. In the 1930s his voice may have been considered too lightweight for a role often associated in Sweden with Wagnerian tenors, while in the 1950s Bizet's masterpiece was performed there as an opéra comique (without Guiraud's accompanied recitatives), which would have obliged Björling to deal once again with spoken dialogue. At the Met too Carmen was a repertory staple, but the role tended to be reserved for skilful singing actors of striking presence.

During the same period Les pêcheurs de perles was absent from the repertoire of both houses, which explains why Björling never attempted the more static role of Nadir, a part that in any case requires more nuanced phrasing than he was able to achieve in his two attempts at the romance “Je crois d'entendre encore.”