L'Arlésienne Suites
| L'Arlésienne | |
|---|---|
| Incidental music by Georges Bizet | |
The composer
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| Based on |
L'Arlésienne by Alphonse Daudet |
| Performed | 1 October 1872: Paris |
| Movements | 27 |
| Scoring |
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| L'Arlésienne | |
|---|---|
| Suite No. 1 | |
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| Performed | 10 November 1872: Paris |
| Movements | four |
| Scoring | orchestra |
| L'Arlésienne | |
|---|---|
| Suite No. 2 | |
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| Published | 1879 |
| Movements | four |
| Scoring | orchestra |
Georges Bizet composed L'Arlésienne as incidental music to Alphonse Daudet's play of the same name, usually translated as The Girl from Arles. It was first performed on 1 October 1872 at the Vaudeville Theatre (now a cinema known as the Gaumont Opéra). Bizet's music consists of 27 numbers (some only a few bars) for voice, chorus, and small orchestra, ranging from short solos to longer entr'actes. Bizet himself played the harmonium backstage at the premiere performance.
Bizet wrote several folk-like themes for the music but also incorporated three existing tunes from a folk-music collection published by Vidal of Aix in 1864: , the Danse dei Chivau-Frus, and Er dou Guet. The score achieves powerful dramatic ends with the most economic of means. Still, it received poor reviews in the wake of the premiere and is not much performed nowadays in its original form. The play itself was not successful, closing after only 21 performances. It had been staged as a last-minute replacement for another play, which had been banned by the censors, and the audience was less than favourably disposed to the new play.
The incidental music has survived and flourished, however. It is most often heard in the form of two suites for orchestra, but has also been recorded complete.
(1) Overture – the March of the Kings; L’Innocent’s theme; Frédéri’s theme.
Tableau 1: The farm at Le Castelet In the first mélodrame (No 2) Francet Mamaï, Frédéri’s grandfather, tells the shepherd Balthazar and Frédéri’s young brother (called ‘l’Innocent’) of Fredéri’s passion for a girl from Arles, while l’Innocent, whose theme dominates this and the next two numbers, tries to talk to the shepherd about a fable about a wolf attacking a goat.
The next mélodrame (3) links the first and second scenes of the play, as the old shepherd, Balthazar, continues telling the wolf story to l’Innocent. The third mélodrame (4) accompanies an exchange between Vivette, Rose Mamaï’s god-daughter, and Balthazar, where the shepherd says he thinks something is stirring in l’Innocent’s mind.
In scene VIII, after a gay offstage chorus, a mélodrame (5), introduces the theme of Mitifio, a cow-herd; he has come to reveal that the Arlésienne has been another’s mistress for two years. In the mélodrame and final chorus (6), Frédéri is about to go off to Arles, but Francet tells him what Mitifio said. The chorus bursts in with a reprise of (5) as Frédéri’s theme accompanies his collapse by the well.
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