L’Arlesienne Suite No. 2

• This suite is extracted from Bizet’s incidental music to the 1872 play L’Arlésienne¹ (“The Young Woman from Arles”)² by French novelist/short-story writer Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897).
• The play’s author Daudet asked Bizet to compose the incidental music.³.
• Much of the music is in a genre called mélodrame: live music played under dialogue, like film underscoring.⁴
• Story: Frédéri falls in love with a mysterious young woman from Arles (who is never seen onstage). When he learns the girl from Arles loves another man, Frédéri agrees to marry an innocent country girl. However, he is driven mad with heartbreak over the girl from Arles, and takes his own life the night before the wedding.⁵

“It was a glittering flop with the loveliest music in the world.”

Daudet reportedly said this of his play L’Arlesienne.⁶

• Bizet arr. the L’Arlesienne Suite no. 1, but Suite no. 2 was arr. for orchestra after Bizet’s death by his friend Ernest Guiraud (1837-1892),⁷ who also arranged the suites from Bizet’s Carmen. ⁸

Farandole

• This movement is a lively dance from the play’s third act. Read more about the Farandole dance genre.
• In this arrangement, Guiraud interpolated “The March of the Three Kings,” a Provençal folk tune used by Bizet elsewhere in the play.⁹

1. Hugh Macdonald, “Bizet, Georges,” Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press, 2001), accessed July 25, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000051829.
2. Betsy Schwarm, “L’Arlésienne,” Encyclopædia Britannica (March 15, 2016), accessed July 25, 2019, https://www.britannica.com/topic/LArlesienne-incidental-music-by-Bizet.
3. Schwarm, “L’Arlésienne,” Encyclopædia Britannica.
4. Macdonald, “Bizet, Georges,” Grove Music Online.
5. Schwarm, “L’Arlésienne,” Encyclopædia Britannica.
6. Phillip Huscher, “Program Notes: Suite No. 2 from L’arlésienne,” The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, accessed July 25, 2019, https://cso.org/uploadedfiles/1_tickets_and_events/program_notes/programnotes_bizet_larlesienne.pdf.
7. “L’Arlésienne Suite no. 2,” International Music Score Library Project, accessed July 25, 2019, https://imslp.org/wiki/Carmen_Suite_No.2_(Bizet%2C_Georges).
8. “Carmen Suite no. 2,” International Music Score Library Project, accessed July 25, 2019, https://imslp.org/wiki/Carmen_Suite_No.2_(Bizet%2C_Georges).
9. Huscher, “Program Notes: Suite No. 2 from L’arlésienne,” The Chicago Symphony Orchestra.