Alphonse Daudet’s play L’Arlésienne was created in 1872 on the occasion of the opening of the first season of the Vaudeville Theatre in Paris.  The plot is based on one of the short stories from the collection Lettres de mon moulin (‘Letters from my Windmill’), with which the young writer, born in the ancient city of  Nîmes, Provence, arrived in Paris and asserted his presence. The drama narrates the love of the pure and innocent adolescent Fréderi for a beautiful woman from the neighbouring town of Arles. On the eve of their wedding, a stranger appears on the farm, who presents evidence that the girl is his mistress. Strict provincial morality can not allow her to become the wife of another and the wedding is canceled. Heart-broken Fréderi commits suicide.

The director of the Vaudeville Theatre, Carvalho, understood that a drama of this kind needed to have a music accompaniment to contribute to the psychological revealing of the characters. He commissioned the writing of the music to George Bizet, whose works he knew and valued. Bizet accepted willingly, because, although he was already known in the Parisian music circles, he was still not in a stable financial position and had to eke a living form lessons and arrangements of foreign works. Besides, he was fond of the drama – it had everything which the most opera librettos lacked: genuine passions; vivid characters; wonderful poetic language and real-life situations.

The composer wrote 27 numbers of the incidental music to the drama. They express the feelings of Fréderi, his despair and passion, and also portray the character of Fréderi’s younger brother – Janet – a dreamy boy of unsound mind, whom Daude has called “L’Innocent”, or ‘the simple-minded’. These two images receive their own musical representation and function as leitmotifs. Alongside them, there also unfold broad scenes from the Provencal lifestyle and depictions of nature – the clear crisp morning, the hot sunny day, the festive chime of the bells, the calls of the herdsmen, resounding in the transparent air. The music is pervaded with light and optimism, overflowing with the passionate power of life which triumphs in spite of personal tragedies. Bizet’s L’Arlesienne says a new word in the realm of French art, which hitherto lacked this kind of combination of vivid images and, at the same time, subtly drawn psychological analysis.

Despite the fact that the Vaudeville Theatre orchestra had only 26 musicians, Bizet managed with the writing of the score in a brilliant way. His orchestration is startling for its conciseness and efficiency. Apart from the usual instruments intrinsic to a theatrical formation, he makes use of the saxophone, whose penetrating sonority is similar to the human voice, and also the Provencal tambourin, which for a long time has been cultivated as an everyday instrument peculiar to the Provence. The picture is completed by the piccolo-flute, which imitates the sonority of the folk instrument galluet, also widely used in France.

The production premiered in September 1872. Sadly, it did not meet with success as the audience did not understand neither the drama, nor the music. The bourgeois audiences wished to see “a lovely spectacle”, and this story about ordinary people had no appeal for them – they expected a seductive heroine to appear on the stage and that never happens. And music was a downright hindrance – there was too much of it and is was used not only in action but also in the entractes. After several performances, audiences ceased attending the theatre altogether But Bizet knew the valuie of his music. For that reason he composed a suite which includes four of the numbers of the incidental music to the drama. The suite was first performed on 10 November 1872, at a symphony concert conducted by Jules Étienne Pasdeloup. Ten years after the death of Bizet, in 1885, the second L’Arlésienne Suite, arranged by his friend Ernest Guiraud, had its first performance.