Benvenuto Cellini by HECTOR BERLIOZ

There’s a fisherman’s rhyme that goes “Early to bed, early to rise, fish like hell, and make up lies.” Hey -- that’s why they call them “fish stories.” But, suppose someone comes back from a deep sea trip swearing that he not only hooked the biggest fish of all time, but also was pulled off the boat and dragged halfway to Zanzibar by the beast. And then, with his hands frozen to the rod as he was pulled through the murky depths, he finally managed to fillet the monster, using only his trusty fish knife.

Well, you obviously wouldn’t believe such a thing, but if the fisherman’s a good story-teller, you woulnd’t care about that. You’d still get caught up in the riveting tale of his narrow narrow escape from a briny demise. And who wouldn’t? People have loved obviously “tall” stories for centuries.

Take this guy named Hieronymus Carl Friedrich. He was a real person, a German aristocrat well-known in his day as a hunter and adventurer, but most of all as one of the great raconteurs of his time. He told about bringing down stampeding heards of elephants with a single shot from his Derringer; fending off entire tribes of Pigmy head-hunters with only an ancient bayonet; and saving an Arabian village from a flood by felling a tree with his pocket-knife.

Ironically, the name of the self-promoting Hieronymus Carl Friedrich has nearly faded from memory. Today, most of us remember him by his aristocratic title: Baron Munchausen. If you’re under 50, you probably know that name from Terry Gillium’s comic film, “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.” But, if you’re old enough to have spent evenings huddled around the family radio, you might remember a guy named Jack Pearl, whose weekly impression of the Baron kept audiences in stitches during the ‘30’s.

Of course, the notion of a character who elicits laughter by telling impossibly tall tales is nothing new in fiction. Look at Mark Twain’s story about a jumping frog contest during the California gold rush. The list of tale-spinners goes on and on. Those of us who grew up with Saturday morning cartoons may remember Commander McBragg, a balmy old Englishman whose tall tales could rival those of the Baron himself.

And then there’s opera. OK, so a lot of operas seem more than a little implausible. But some actually spring from famous and traditional tall tales, like Benjamin Britten’s opera based on the truly tall story of Paul Bunyan. But Britten’s drama about a lumberjack of skyscraper proportions is hardly the first opera based on well-known tales of a legendary, larger-than-life character.

A century or so earlier, Hector Berlioz wrote an opera called BENVENUTO CELLINI. What makes this one intriguing is that, unlike Paul Bunyan, Cellini was a real person - a sort of artistically- inclined Baron Munchhausen. Painter, sculptor, jeweler - Cellini’s contribution to the arts is still being felt today. He was also a tale-spinner of such egocentric proportions that his autobiography is still considered one of 16th-century literature’s greatest works - of fiction.

So, this week on At the Opera, host Lou Santacroce talks with Renaissance scholar Ingrid Rowland about the real Cellini, to help separate the historical wheat from the whimsical chaff. Also, film historian Eric Smoodin will tell us why we love stories about narrow escapes from impossible situations. And regular guest Scott Speck guides us through Berlioz’s ingenius score for the opera. Afterward, stay tuned for the opera itself, with a performance of BENVENUTO CELLINI from the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, on NPR World of Opera.

Listen as Lou tells about Berlioz' tall tale about a true historical figure, BENVENUTO CELLINI. (Requires the free RealPlayer 5.0 or higher. You can also listen with a 14.4 connection.)



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