The opera "Carmen", after a short story by Prosper Merimée, and the incidental music to the play "L'Arlésienne" by Alphonse Daudet are without doubt the most important works of Bizet. It is significant for him that his Imagination was aroused most by literary subjects of high Standing. In spite of failure at their first Performances, both works became worldwide
successes continuing to our days.
The three examples selected here, all of them pieces complete in themselves within the larger framework, are a testimony to the fact that the brilliant orchestrator Bizet had a special predilection for the flute. The opera, in particular, is full of the most beautiful and, for the musician, rewarding, but at the same time very demanding flute passages. In all three pieces, the flute appears in combination with the harp, a pairing created previously by Mozart and other composers. They also have in common that out of the early soloistic duo of flute and harp an orchestra tutti gradually develops in which the flute continues the top part, but shares it with other voices. However, while in the two E flat major pieces (which have some other
things in common) the end occurs in a piano, with the two solo Instruments again standing out, there is a single furious crescendo-accelerando in the Danse Bohémienne.
Bizet has combined a number of pieces from the incidental music in a suite' in an instrumentally enlarged Version which is now called "L'Arlesienne Suite No 1" "L'Arlesienne Suite No 2" from which the present Minuet is taken was compiled after Bizet's death by his fellow Student E Guiraud (who also wrote the recitatives for "Carmen" which were added later on). The "Bohemian Dance" has little in common with the typical Bohemian idiom. As a concession to public taste it has - from a dramaturgical point of view - fallen into disrepute, not entirely without justification. Its absolute musical worth, however, remains unchallenged. The
Instrumentation which grows constantly fuller, beginning with the duo of flute and harp up to the full orchestra tutti, can, understandably, be suggested in this version only inadequately. - The cut in the Allegro non troppo bndges 29 measures without the leading flute part. It can be skipped without pause, in order to give the music continuity.
The Entr'acte from "Carmen" forms the marvelous contrast between the preceding triumphal finale of Act 2 and the sinister mood of the scene of the smugglers in the beginning of Act 3.
Instrumentation:
flute and piano
