Adagietto (L'Arlésienne Suite no. 1)

Bizet wrote L'Arlésienne in 1872 as incidental music for Alphonse Daudet's play, staged at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris on 1 October. The theatre gave him twenty-six players and a small chorus; the play closed after twenty-one performances. Bizet then salvaged four numbers into a concert suite for full orchestra, first heard under Jules Pasdeloup on 10 November of the same year, and this time the reception was warm. The Adagietto, scored for muted strings alone and lasting barely three minutes, is the shortest of the four and the one furthest removed from the Provençal colouring of the rest.