L'arlésienne Suite No. 1

The enduring popularity of Bizet’s first L’Arlésienne suite owes much to the clarity and charm with which it captures something unequivocally "French" in sound—especially the warm, bright Frenchness of the South, around Provence, where the composer sourced a good deal of his melodies from folk material. Composed in 1872, it was essentially a rescue exercise, to salvage music he had written for an unsuccessful stage play—called L’Arlésienne (The Girl from Arles) and featuring a Provençal tale of thwarted love with a tragic ending. When the play closed, Bizet immediately began to rework highlights from his incidental score—mostly short items for small orchestra and chorus—into what ultimately became a four-movement suite, organised along symphonic lines. It opens with a “Prélude” whose now-famous marching tune derives from an old Epiphany carol. Then comes a “Minuet”, an “Adagietto” and a final “Carillon” that imitates the sound of ringing bells in what it’s not hard to imagine as the dazzle of a southern sun.