La Chasse d’Ossian

Composition: 1860. Bizet’s third envoi from Rome consisted of two movements from his [2ème] Symphonie and an overture La Chasse d’Ossian which had not been mentioned in his correspondence and which has not been found. The work was commended by the judges but was not performed at the séance publique in October 1861. It is possible that it may have been intended as the first movement of the symphony, for when the later version of the symphony was performed in 1869, the first movement was entitled Une chasse dans la forêt d’Ostie, which led Octave Séré to suggest that La Chasse d’Ossian was a misreading by the judges of La Chasse d’Ostie, Ostia being the port of Rome. In its first version the first movement had been planned as a portrait of the city of Rome, and in its second version the music is unmistakably the music of the hunt. So perhaps the music survives in that form.