Benvenuto Cellini

by HECTOR BERLIOZ
Amsterdam Concertgebouw,
Rotterdam Philharmonic
Valery Gergiev, conductor

Performers listed below.

It’s hard to describe anyone with just one word - especially someone as complex as a great creative artist. But in the case of Hector Berlioz, there is a single word that comes quickly to mind: “outrageous.” Berlioz not only lived his life to the extreme, as a full-blown “brooding Romantic artist,” he went out of his way to do it conspicuously - by openly obsessing over a famous actress, for example. After seeing Harriet Smithson’s Shakespeare performances, he virtually stalked the poor woman - succumbing to a mental state that the erudite Grove Dictionary describes as “emotional derangement.” Eventually, he married Smithson, but naturally their real life relationship paled in comparison to the composer’s fantasies, and Berlioz broke off with her as publically as he had pursued her.

His music also “pushes the envelope.” When we think of symphonic innovators, we might think Beethoven is the most obvious example - and with good reason. But just three years after Beethoven died, Berlioz came up with the “Symphonie Fantastique,” a then nearly unthinkable concoction of raucous orchestrations, weird formal structures, and over-the-top, autobiographical story-telling. And that’s not to mention the symphony’s plain representation of the composer’s own romantic obsession, combined with sequences so vivid some say they were inspired by opium dreams. To call this music “forward-looking” would be an extreme understatement - and from that point on, Berlioz never looked back.

So when it came to writing his first opera, in the mid-1830’s, it’s not surprising that Berlioz chose a truly outrageous character as his subject: Benvenuto Cellini, a real life, 16th-century sculptor who was - at least according to his own press releases - one of the great defiant heroes of all time.

The libretto of BENVENUTO CELLINI is based on the actual memoirs of the title character, a truly influential artist whose work survives today. If you can believe those memoirs - and they may be more fiction than fact - he was quite a character, a man destined for historic greatness, who encountered amazing adventures while defying everyone who got in his way - up to and including the Pope. And if you don’t believe his story, what does it matter? It’s still great stuff for an opera, as you’ll find out this week on NPR WORLD OF OPERA, with Steve Curwood. The performance is from the famed Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam, with renowned conductor Valery Gergiev.

Join Lou Santacroce for NPR’s AT THE OPERA, for a preview 30 minutes before curtain time.

Performers:
Anna Netrebko, soprano (Teresa); Monica Bacelli, mezzo-soprano (Ascanio); Chris Merritt, tenor (Benvenuto Cellini); Sergei Alexashkin, baritone (Balducci); Stanislaw Schwets, bass (Clement VII); Nikolai Gassiev, baritone (Fieramosca); Marten Smeding, tenor (Pompeo); Kor-Jan Dusseljee, tenor (Francesco); Sorin Coligan, bass (Bernardino)


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