The incidental music to Alphonse Daudet's play L'Arlésienne (usually translated as 'The Girl from Arles') was composed by Georges Bizet for the first performance of the play on 1 October 1872 at the Vaudeville Theatre (now known as the Paramount Theatre). It 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 Marcho dei Rei, 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. WIKIPEDIA
VIDEO: Georges Bizet: L'Arlésienne Suite No. 1 & Suite No. 2 / Nathalie Stutzmann, conductor · Orquesta Sinfonica Valencia / Recorded at Palau de la Musica, Valencia, 12 December 2012.
