Berlioz: Benvenuto Cellini
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LSO Live Berlioz Benvenuto Cellini Sir Colin Davis Gregory Kunde Laura Claycomb Darren Jeffery Peter Coleman–Wright John Relyea Isabelle Cals London Symphony Chorus London Symphony Orchestra Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) Page Index Benvenuto Cellini 3 Track listing Opera in two acts 6 English notes Music by Hector Berlioz 9 French notes Words by Auguste Barbier and Léon de Wailly 13 German notes 17 Composer biography Gregory Kunde tenor Cellini 18 Libretto Laura Claycomb soprano Teresa 52 Conductor biography Darren Jeffery bass Balducci 53 Artist biographies Peter Coleman-Wright baritone Fieramosca 58 Orchestra and Chorus personnel lists Andrew Kennedy tenor Francesco 59 LSO biography Isabelle Cals soprano Ascanio Jacques Imbrailo baritone Pompeo John Relyea bass Pope Clement VII Andrew Foster-Williams bass Bernardino Alasdair Elliott tenor Cabaretier Sir Colin Davis conductor London Symphony Orchestra London Symphony Chorus Joseph Cullen chorus director Jocelyne Dienst musical assistant James Mallinson producer Daniele Quilleri casting consultant Classic Sound Ltd recording, editing and mastering facilities Jonathan Stokes and Neil Hutchinson for Classic Sound Ltd balance engineers Ian Watson and Jenni Whiteside for Classic Sound Ltd editors A high density DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording Recorded live at the Barbican, London 26 and 29 June 2007 © 2008 London Symphony Orchestra, London UK P 2008 London Symphony Orchestra, London UK 2 Track listing Track 1 Ouverture 10’09’’ p18 Act I, Premier Tableau / Act I, First Tableau Scène 1 2 No 1. Teresa! (Balducci) 1’33’’ p18 3 Enfin il est sorti (Teresa, Cellini, Balducci, Chorus) 2’18’’ p18 Scène 2 4 No 2. Les belles fleurs! (Teresa) 4’14’’ p18 5 Quand j’aurai votre âge (Teresa) 3’51’’ p18 Scène 3 6 No 3. Cellini! (Teresa, Cellini, Fieramosca) 6’35’’ p19 7 Ah! mourir, chère belle (Cellini, Teresa, Fieramosca) 6’59’’ p19 Scène 4 8 Ciel! Nous sommes perdus! (Teresa, Cellini, Fieramosca, Balducci) 2’19’’ p24 Scène 5 9 No 4. A nous, voisines et servantes! (Balducci, Teresa, Fieramosca, Chorus) 1’07’’ p25 Scène 6 10 Ah! maître drôle, ah, libertin! (Chorus, Teresa, Balducci, Fieramosca) 2’08’’ p25 Act I, Deuxième Tableau / Act I, Second Tableau Scène 7 11 No 5. Une heure encore (Cellini) 5’58’’ p26 Scène 8-9 12 No 6. A boire, à boire (Bernardino, Cellini, Francesco, Chorus) 3’49’’ p26 13 Amis, avant qu’on recommence (Bernardino, Francesco, Cabaretier, Cellini, Ascanio, Chorus ) 3’11’’ p27 3 Track listing Track Scène 10-11 14 Cette somme t’est due (Ascanio, Cellini, Chorus) 1’33’’ p28 15 Oui, oui cette somme était due (Cellini, Francesco, Bernardino, Ascanio, Cabaretier, Chorus) 4’30’’ p28 Scène 12 16 C’est trop fort (Fieramosca, Pompeo) 1’28’’ p29 17 No 7. Ah! Qui pourrait me résister? (Fieramosca) 3’25’’ p30 18 No 8. Finale. Le Carnaval 1’02’’ p30 Scène 13 19 Vous voyez, j’espère (Balducci, Teresa, Cellini, Ascanio, Chorus) 3’15’’ p30 20 Venez, venez peuple de Rome (Chorus, Teresa, Balducci, Cellini, Ascanio, Fieramosca, Pompeo) 4’48’’ p31 21 Entree d’Arléquin (Chorus) 0’54’’ p33 22 Ariette de Pasquarello (Chorus) 1’39’’ p33 23 Il plaît fort (Chorus, Balducci) 1’41’’ p33 24 Soyez surpris (Chorus, Balducci, Teresa, Fieramosca, Cellini, Pompeo, Ascanio, Francesco, Bernardino) 1’04’’ p34 25 Ah! cher canon du fort (Chorus, Teresa, Ascanio, Fieramosca, Balducci) 3’14’’ p36 Act II, Troisième Tableau / Act II, Third Tableau 26 No 9. Entr’acte 1’54’’ p38 Scène 1 27 Ah, qu’est-il devenu? (Teresa, Ascanio, Cellini, Chorus) 5’01’’ p38 Scène 2-4 28 No 10. Ma dague en main (Cellini, Teresa, Ascanio) 3’34’’ p40 Scène 5 29 No 11. Ah! je te trouve enfin (Balducci, Cellini, Teresa, Ascanio, Fieramosca) 1’28’’ p40 4 Track listing Track Scène 6 30 Le Pape ici! (Teresa, Ascanio, Cellini, Fieramosca, Balducci, Le Pape) 11’49’’ p41 31 No 12. Finale. Ah, maintenant de sa folle impudence (Le Pape, Cellini, Teresa, Ascanio, Balducci, Fieramosca, Chorus) 2’16’’ p44 Act II, Quatrième Tableau / Act II, Fourth Tableau 32 No 13. Prélude 1’04’’ p45 Scène 7 33 No 14. Tra la la la (Ascanio) 5’52’’ p45 Scène 8 34 No 15. Seul pour lutter (Cellini) 8’17’’ p45 Scène 9-14 35 No 16. Bien heureux les matelots (Chorus, Cellini, Ascanio) 2’42’’ p45 36 Vite au travail, sans plus attendre (Cellini, Fieramosca, Ascanio, Teresa) 1’01’’ p46 Scène 15 37 No 17. Peuple ouvrier (Bernardino, Francesco, Teresa, Chorus) 2’05’’ p47 Scène 16-17 38 Ciel, c’est Fieramosca! (Teresa, Fieramosca, Bernardino, Cellini, Chorus) 0’42’’ p47 39 Couvrez-moi ce drôle (Cellini, Francesco, Bernardino, Teresa, Ascanio, Fieramosca, Chorus) 2’38’’ p48 Scène 18 40 No 18. Teresa, Teresa, ici (Balducci, Le Pape, Cellini, Chorus) 1’57’’ p48 Scène 19 41 Du métal! Du métal (Fieramosca, Cellini, Balducci, Teresa, Ascanio, Le Pape, Francesco, Bernardino, Chorus) 9’23’’ p50 Total 148’16” 5 Alberto Venzago Hector Berlioz (1803-69) worthy of the opera’s hero. The result was a to the habits and expectations of the bulk of consequence, scenes not designed to be sung, Benvenuto Cellini (1834-38) score simply too difficult for the technical the Opéra’s public. They were used to the and which, in speech, moved quickly and easily, Opéra-Comique in two acts and four capabilities of the day. heroic melodramas and sonorous platitudes of were forced into music against the grain. tableaux the librettos Scribe wrote for Meyerbeer and Even if the management and musical staff of Auber and Halévy. What they got was a libretto This was particularly damaging to all the alarms Berlioz thought he never wrote anything more the Opéra had had much more goodwill (by Auguste Barbier, Léon de Wailly and Alfred and excursions which precede the brilliantly original than his ’opéra semi-seria’ towards him than they did, the music’s de Vigny) written in a racy language full of dénouement, the casting of the Perseus – the Benvenuto Cellini. Yet apart from The rhythmic complexity would probably have colloquialisms and with a plot that was a scenes where Fieramosca lures Cellini into Damnation of Faust, no work of his was defeated them. As it was, the management, disconcerting combination of grandeur and challenging him to a duel, and the foundrymen such a failure. At the Paris Opéra in 1838–39 which had put on the work largely to keep in farce; and, for the most part, they didn’t care go on strike in the absence of their master. it managed only four performances (followed with the influential Journal des débats (of which for it. These were the scenes which, together with by three of the first act plus a ballet), before Berlioz was the music critic), felt no incentive to Cellini’s and Ascanio’s arias and the workmen’s disappearing without trace. Liszt championed it, support it. The conductor François-Antoine The hybrid character which has so often been song, Liszt cut after the Weimar premiere. many years later, in Weimar, but Paris happily Habeneck – a violinist-conductor of the old held against Benvenuto Cellini – an opera Berlioz, conscious that the work’s future was in forgot all about it. It was proof that Berlioz was school – was at best ambivalent, and unwilling whose serious theme seems continually Germany, where shorter operas were the norm, merely a symphonist and therefore not an and/or unable to maintain the many fast threatened by elements of the burlesque – had complied with the main cut, but persuaded opera composer.The reason for its Parisian tempos, and the Opéra’s reigning star, the tenor its origin in the early history of the work. When Liszt to reinstate the song and the two arias. failure lay partly in the vebrilliance and Duprez, piqued at not achieving a triumph in Berlioz read Cellini’s autobiography, in the early But so carefully planned a libretto could only be originality that Berlioz, like Liszt, recognised. He the role of Cellini and troubled by Berlioz’s 1830s, and decided to base a dramatic work on maimed by such treatment. It substituted an had been waiting so long for a chance to show ’learned and complicated music’, abandoned it the life of this ’bandit of genius’, he planned it arbitrary, inconsequential order of events for what he could do in opera that when it came and pulled out. as an opéra-comique: that is, a drama in which one that had been neat and logical. he couldn’t resist seizing it to the hilt. The the serious and the comic could co-exist, and subject – Italy in its tumultuous Renaissance But there were other reasons too. Benvenuto action of a non-lyric nature would be carried on That is why modern revivals have generally heyday, and an innovative artist battling against fell partly because of political hostility to the by spoken dialogue. But the Opéra-Comique chosen to go back to the original Paris mediocre rivals and obstructive officialdom – Débats and personal hostility to the composer, rejected it, whereupon its authors had no sequence – which Berlioz himself retained was one he could fully identify with, and he but also because of the nature of the work choice but to try the Opéra; and the Opéra, if when, at Liszt’s request, he revised the score threw himself into it with a mixture of itself. If the music was too difficult for the without much enthusiasm, accepted it. But for the first Weimar performances – and also to recklessness and passionate craftsmanship Opéra’s musicians, the libretto was too foreign spoken dialogue was not allowed there. In go back further and reinstate the original 6 conception of Cellini as an opéra-comique.