Symphonie en ut majeur / L'Arlésienne

Album by Georges Bizet & Orchestre de l’Opéra de Lyon & Sir John Eliot Gardiner

Symphonie en ut majeur / L'Arlésienne is a compilation of orchestral works by Georges Bizet, presenting his Symphony in C (composed in 1855) alongside the incidental music for L'Arlésienne (composed in 1872). The pairing highlights the contrast between Bizet's youthful command of classical symphonic forms with clear, balanced orchestration and his later, more dramatic and colourfully orchestrated theatrical writing that incorporates Provençal folk-inflected material and marks key stages in his compositional development.