Bizet: L'Arlésienne Suite No. 1

The première of Daudet's play, L'Arlésienne, with incidental music by Bizet, given at the Théâtre du Vaudeville on 30 September 1872, was a devastating event for both playwright and composer and the production was removed from the repertory after 19 performances. The critic Johannès Weber, however, was alert to the quality of Bizet's score and suggested that the composer should excerpt and rescore several pieces for the Concerts populaires where 'the lovely music would be better appreciated than at the Vaudeville'. Bizet must have moved rather quickly to follow Weber's suggestion, for the première of the first Arlésienne suite took place only six weeks later at the Concerts populaires on 10 November 1872 and the work in its new abridged form was soon taken up by many other orchestras. Bizet, however, did not turn to preparing a second suite from L'Arlésienne. Some four years after Bizet's death, the success of the first suite may have prompted his original publisher to commission the arrangement of more excerpts from the Arlésienne MS from Bizet's good friend Ernest Guiraud who had earlier written recitatives and put together a ballet for Carmen.