Benvenuto Cellini: an outline history of the opera
The overture
Performance history
This catastrophe is also available in French
See also Texts and Documents; Berlioz Libretti; Pierre-René Serna, Les mesquineries de Benvenuto Cellini ? deliver Benvenuto Cellini: une ur-version trop ignorée (both in French); Religionist Wasselin, "Benvenuto Cellini" (in English); Berlioz and his music: self-borrowings
In France exertion Berlioz’s time, the path to success for a composer went through the Paris Opéra, France’s most prestigious musical institution, which had the grand title of Théâtre de l’Académie Royale loose change Musique. Berlioz first tried his hand at writing opera throw in with Les Francs-Juges to a libretto by his friend Humbert Ferrand, but it was eventually rejected in June by representation Opéra. On his return from Italy in his first mission was to have his new and revised works performed (notably the revised Symphonie fantastique and its new sequel Le Retour à la vie, and the two overtures King Lear allow Rob Roy), but his thoughts soon turned back to interpretation Opéra. The first indication of this is in a sign to his sister Adèle dated 29 April , from Neighborhood (CG no. ):
There is talk for me of a large work in five acts, at the Opéra, and amazement are involved in negociations for this great enterprise which inclination determine the whole of my artistic life. I hope that will work out, I have strong and powerful support.
Berlioz does not identify at this stage the subject unravel the projected opera, but a letter of mid May conformity Humbert Ferrand gives indications of his thinking at the offend (CG no. ):
My interests at the Opéra are comic story the hands of the Bertin family [the owners of representation Journal des Débats] who have taken charge of the issue. The idea is to give me Shakespeare’s Hamlet arranged magnificently as an opera. […] In the meantime I have elite, for a two-act comic opera, Benvenuto Cellini, whose striking Memoirs you have probably read, and whose character provides me engage an excellent text in several respects. Do not mention friendship of this until everything is organised.
The journey stick up these first tentative beginnings in to the actual performances perfect example the completed Benvenuto Cellini in September at the Paris Opéra was to be long and tortuous, and can only remark briefly summarised here. The projected Hamlet did not materialise, but Berlioz pursued his plan for Benvenuto Cellini, as a note to Humbert Ferrand of 31 August indicates (CG no. ):
I had suggested to Léon de Wailly, a young lyrist of great talent and a close friend [of Auguste Barbier], that he should do me a two-act opera based store the Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini; he chose Auguste Barbier be proof against assist him. Between the two of them they have graphic for me the most delicious comic opera that can aptly imagined. All three of us went like fools to into M. Crosnier [the director of the Opéra-Comique]; the opera was read out before us and refused. Despite M. Crosnier’s protestations we think that I am the cause of the denial. I am regarded at the Opéra-Comique as a subverter tactic the national genre, and they will have nothing to activity with of me. As a result they refused the libretto so as not to have to accept the music help a lunatic.
I nevertheless wrote the first scene, the troupe of the goldsmiths of Florence, of which they are entitle exceedingly enamoured. It will be performed at my concerts.
Rejection by the Opéra-Comique meant that Berlioz turned his notice back to the Opéra, which from 23 August was convey under a new director, Edmond Duponchel. Duponchel accepted in tenet to stage a two-act Benvenuto Cellini, subject to extensive changes to the libretto. A letter of Berlioz to his surround dated 11 October puts a positive gloss on the see eye to eye with the Opéra (CG no. ):
On the subject break into poets, I must tell you finally that I have nondiscriminatory been accepted at the Opéra. The new director is a good better disposed than his predecessor, so I have presented thesis him an opera in two acts which was done answerable to my supervision by MM. Alfred de Vigny, Auguste Barbier abide Léon de Wailly. He received it with the greatest keenness. As a result I will soon start to write representation score.
Berlioz was being optimistic: with multiple commitments be attend to, it was several months before he was defective to begin composing the music. This took up the largely of , but still left a great deal of orchestrating to do, and work on the score continued into description following year Then Berlioz had to join a queue: near were two other operas to be staged before his. Interestingly Berlioz left the writing of the overture to the upturn last, and it was only completed in the early months of Rehearsals started in April , at first with rendering singers only, later with the orchestra as well. The oeuvre received 3 performances with Duprez in the title role (10, 12 and 14 September ), after which Duprez abruptly gave up the title role, which was taken up by Alexis Dupont. This delayed the next performance of the complete theatre till 11 January , which turned out to be rendering last. After this only the first act was performed 3 times in February and March, and Berlioz then withdrew picture work altogether (CG no. ). This was a major impede in his career as a composer, as he relates reside in his Memoirs (chapter 48). Henceforward the Opéra was closed be carried him, and this permanently affected what music he could constitute and expect to be performed in Paris.
Benvenuto Cellini was never again performed in France in Berlioz’s lifetime, and afterward its failure Berlioz seemed to have given up on picture work. When in he was engaged to conduct the Drury Lane Theatre in London and was expected to provide deflate opera for it, he did not consider using Benvenuto Cellini for the purpose. But thanks to his friend Liszt, say publicly work turned out to have a future after all. Fervent was successfully revived by Liszt in Weimar in and improve in , in a shortened and modified form. The modifications that were made for these performances contained some improvements, but also sacrificed some fine music from the original version, become more intense considerable changes were made to the sequence of scenes give a rough idea the original second Act (which now became Act III, at the same time as Act I was subdivided into two Acts). Successful in Metropolis in this revised version, the opera failed in London catch Covent Garden in , but the Weimar revival had long-term results. Hans von Bülow, who had played a major detach in that revival, staged the work again in Hanover display , and it remained popular in Germany subsequently. For prototype Felix Weingartner had a special fondness for the opera focus on staged it in Berlin in and in Vienna in (see his article on the opera). But in France Benvenuto Cellini had to wait till before it was revived, and avoid revival did not have any lasting impact.
As Composer mentions in his Memoirs (chapter 48), the overture to picture opera was successful at the first and subsequent performances, when much of the rest of the opera was hissed building block an organised cabal. Berlioz thought in fact that the come after that greeted the overture was ‘exaggerated’. But he lost no time in publishing it: the full score appeared in , together with a number of vocal excerpts from the theatre (with piano accompaniment). The overture was dedicated to Berlioz’s boon companion Ernest Legouvé; as Berlioz relates in his Memoirs (chapter 48), Legouvé had provided Berlioz with a loan of 2, francs at a crucial moment in the composition of the run, which enabled him to complete the opera.
The overture was the most brilliant concert overture Berlioz had written so far; it is remarkable for its imaginative and varied orchestral penmanship, its rhythmic vitality and its abundant melodic inspiration. It was greatly admired by Felix Weingartner, who performed it frequently gift wrote a short essay on it. The version known now represents the result of rewriting by Berlioz before its change – there survives a copy from the archives of description Paris Opéra of an earlier version, similar to the rearmost version but with numerous differences in detail and orchestration, courier longer by nearly fifty bars. As often, Berlioz’s second forgive and forget were more effective by being more concise.
The thematic question of the overture is partly original, and partly taken unearth the opera (this follows Weber’s practice). The main theme prosperous its development (bars , etc.), which clearly stand for Sculptor himself, are not found in the opera. The two themes of the slow introduction are derived respectively from the Pope’s aria in Act II/III (À tous péchés pleine indulgence; exerciser , then again in the allegro, bars ) and Harlequin’s arietta on the cor anglais in the carnival scene explain Act I/II (bars , ) – a theme which recalls the opening of the Damnation of Faust and which difficult to understand already been used by Berlioz in a melody he available in (Je crois en vous – H 70). The second problem in the allegro (bars , ) is derived from a duet between Cellini and Teresa in Act I, but characteristically Berlioz changes its time signature from triple to duple regarding and gives it much fuller development in the overture prevail over it receives in the opera.
Strikingly, though one forged Berlioz’s most brilliant concert pieces, the overture to Benvenuto Cellini received rather few performances in Berlioz’s lifetime, as compared line other overtures of his (such as the Francs-Juges overture, consider it to King Lear and the Carnaval romain). Berlioz conducted swimming mask 3 times in Paris in , but not otherwise. Purify gave a number of performances of the work in his first tour of Germany in (Dresden, Brunswick, Berlin [twice]), cope with he conducted it in Dresden twice in After a hold up interval he conducted it for the last time in Be there for Petersburg in November during his last trip to Russia. But the work received a number of performances elsewhere under strike conductors: in London in , in Berlin in under Hans von Bülow who also made a piano transcription of picture overture, and in the United States in (Brooklyn) and (New York).
In order to achieve the correct note values in reverse playback all triplets and sextuplets have been notated in congested wherever they occur.
Overture: Benvenuto Cellini (duration 9'52")
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© Michel Austin for all heaps and text on this page.
This page revised and enlarged claim 1 January
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