Microsoft Word ProgramNotes Bizet Larlesienne docx

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PROGRAM NOTES 

by Phillip Huscher 

 

Georges Bizet 

Born October 25, 1838, Paris, France. 

Died June 3, 1875, Bougival, near Paris, France.  

Suite No. 2 from L'arlésienne 

Bizet composed incidental music for Alphonse Daudet's play L'arlésienne in 1872. Bizet drew a four-

movement concert suite from the score, and in 1879, four years after the composer's death, Ernest 

Guiraud compiled a second suite of four selections, which is performed at these concerts. The orchestra 

consists of two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and english horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, alto 

saxophone, four horns, two trumpets and two cornets, three trombones, timpani, tambourine, bass drum, 

cymbals, harp, and strings. Performance time is approximately eighteen minutes.  

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra's first subscription concert performances of music from Bizet's 

L'arlésienne (the Suite no. 1) were given at the Auditorium Theatre on December 28 and 29, 1894, with 

Theodore Thomas conducting. The Orchestra's first performances of the Suite no. 2 were given at 

Orchestra Hall on November 29 and 30, 1912, with Frederick Stock conducting. Our most recent 

subscription concert performances of this suite were given on November 25, 27, and 28, 1987, with Erich 

Leinsdorf conducting. The Orchestra first performed music from L'arlésienne at the Ravinia Festival on 

July 8, 1941, with Sir Thomas Beecham conducting, and most recently on June 21, 1997, with Christoph 

Eschenbach conducting.  

The Chicago Symphony recorded both suites from L'arlésienne in 1967 under Jean Martinon for RCA. 

Under Frederick Stock, the Orchestra recorded the Farandole from the Second Suite in 1916 for 

Columbia. A 1965 performance of the Farandole conducted by Jean Martinon is included in From the 

Archives, vol. 12: A Tribute to Jean Martinon.  

Georges Bizet was a remarkable young talent. He was admitted to the Paris Conservatory two weeks 

before his tenth birthday and won the first of many prizes only six months later. (Over the years, he was 

given prizes—several of them first place awards—in solfeggio, piano, organ, and fugue; his piano playing, 

in particular, won the praise of Liszt and Berlioz.) Bizet began to study counterpoint with Pierre 

Zimmerman, a distinguished teacher near retirement age, whose main contribution to his student's 

development may have been his frequent absences from the classroom, when his substitute was Charles 

Gounod, then on the verge of international fame. (Gounod was married to Zimmerman's daughter Anna.) 

Gounod quickly recognized Bizet's exceptional gifts and asked him to assist with various musical projects.  

Despite his abundant talent, Bizet did not find his true calling until the 1860s. The Pearl Fishers, which 

premiered in 1863, was not a success with the public or the critics (except for the invariably perceptive 

Berlioz), but it is the work of a born opera composer, overflowing with the promise that would ultimately be 

fulfilled in his final work, Carmen. It was Léon Carvalho, who commissioned The Pearl Fishers, who 

suggested Bizet's next theatrical venture as composer of incidental music for Alphonse Daudet's play 

L'arlésienne, a melodrama about the young peasant Fédéri's love for a girl from Arles, the lovely, sun-

dappled town in Provence. (Since the title character doesn't actually appear in the play, L'arlésienne 

eventually became a French tag for someone who fails to show up.) The drama proved to have little 

staying power—in 1897, when it was produced on Broadway, the New York Times said, "One must be 

interested beforehand in Provence and its people to care much for the play." Even today, after Peter 

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Mayle has turned Provence into a go-to destination, Daudet's play holds little appeal. But Bizet's music, 

as excerpted in two popular suites, is a concert hall favorite.  

Writing for a conventional pit band, Bizet supplied twenty-seven musical numbers, ranging from bits of 

background music of just a few measures to big instrumental showpieces that served as preludes and 

entr'actes. The production ran for only twenty-one performances and played to dispiriting, largely empty 

houses. "It was a glittering flop with the loveliest music in the world," Daudet is supposed to have said 

sometime after the premiere. Bizet too clearly thought highly of his score, and immediately after the 

theatrical run, he excerpted four numbers and rescored them for full orchestra. The new suite quickly 

became a hit in the concert hall.  

Bizet died in the summer of 1875, on the night of the thirty-third performance of his new opera Carmen. 

(He had fallen ill soon after the premiere, which had a lukewarm reception; the night he died, the Carmen, 

Célestine Galli-Marié, is said to have been so overcome with premonition in the scene where she reads 

death in the cards that she fainted while leaving the stage.) Four years later, Ernest Guiraud, a friend of 

Bizet and the composer of the recitatives that were added to Carmen for the Vienna production in 1875, 

put together a second suite of music from L'arlésienne. As a composer, Guiraud paled next to Bizet—"I 

am trying to liven him up a bit," Bizet once said, complaining that Guiraud's approach to music was "a 

little soft, a little apathetic." But he understood Bizet's genius perfectly, and his suite of excerpts from 

L'arlésienne is a fitting companion to Bizet's own set.  

Guiraud begins with the lovely Pastorale that sets the early morning scene for act 2 (the fully awakened 

middle section was originally a chorus of off-stage revelers in the play). The Intermezzo, based on a 

Provencal folksong, is the music that divides the two scenes of act 2. The minuet that follows isn't from 

L'arlésienne at all; perhaps jealous that Bizet had already taken the best music for his own orchestral 

suite, Guiraud turned to Bizet's La jolie fille de Perth, an opera written ten years earlier, for this charming 

dance. The final, brilliant Farandole is a dance from act 3 of L'arlésienne, here magnificently expanded 

and embellished with the addition of "The March of the Three Kings," a regional folk tune Bizet had 

originally used in another number. Like Guiraud's version of Carmen, which reigned for decades in opera 

houses, this suite from L'arlésienne is Bizet filtered through Guiraud's admiring eyes. As an introduction to 

Bizet's genius for color and melody, and as a sample of his born sense for atmosphere and theatrical flair, 

it is as irresistible as anything the master himself gave us. 

 

Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. 

 

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