Report: The Girl from Arles review – Bizet’s music for forgotten rustic tragedy has punch and poetry

The Guardian — Culture has reported on “Report: The Girl from Arles review – Bizet’s music for forgotten rustic tragedy has punch and poetry,” presenting it as the central development in the source material available for this brief.

Queen Elizabeth Hall, London Bizet’s incidental music for Daudet’s 1872 play The Girl from Arles was given its first UK complete performance by Sir Mark Elder, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and strong soloists in Jeremy Sams’ staging ‘The prettiest music in the world” was how the playwright Alphonse Daudet described the incidental music Bizet composed for his 1872 play The Girl from Arles – which is a bit like describing Carmen, the opera Bizet would compose less than three years later, as a charming little love story. The report also notes that Daudet’s play initially flopped but was saved by the music Bizet wrote for it, which comprises 27 separate numbers ranging from string whispers a few bars long to full-blown orchestral entr’actes and celebratory choruses. Two orchestral Suites from L’Arlésienne have long been familiar in the concert hall. But, following more than 150 years, this was the first chance for UK audiences to hear the complete incidental music in its proper context. Presented by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and conducted by Mark Elder, there was a danger this play with music could turn into music with a play – but in fact the two elements complemented each other at equal strength.

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