Program

One Hundred Twentieth Season Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Music Director Pierre Boulez Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO

Thursday, September 23, 2010, at 8:00 Saturday, September 25, 2010, at 8:00 Friday, September 24, 2010, at 8:00 Tuesday, September 28, 2010, at 7:30 Riccardo Muti Conductor Gérard Depardieu Narrator Mario ZeffiriTenor Kyle Ketelsen Bass-baritone Chicago Symphony Chorus Duain Wolfe Director Music by Hector Berlioz Symphonie fantastique Dreams—Passions (Largo—Allegro agitato e appassionato assai) A Ball (Waltz: Allegro non troppo) A Scene in the Country (Adagio) March to the Scaffold (Allegretto non troppo) Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath (Larghetto—Allegro)

Intermission

Lélio, or the Return to Life “The Fisherman,” Ballad by Goethe Chorus of the Shades Song of the Brigands Song of Bliss—Hymn The Aeolian Harp—Memories Fantasy on Shakespeare’s The Tempest Gérard Depardieu Mario Zeffiri Kyle Ketelsen Chicago Symphony Chorus

First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances Supertitles by Hugh Macdonald

CSO Tuesday series concerts are sponsored by United Airlines. Steinway is the official piano of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Comments by Phillip Huscher

his week, Riccardo Muti introduces the work Berlioz Tviewed as his signature artistic statement—the evening- long pairing of his most famous composition, the Symphonie fantastique, long a staple of our orchestra’s repertory, and its little-known sequel, Lélio, never before performed by the CSO. Berlioz wrote Lélio as the “conclusion and complement” of his Symphonie fantastique—the resolution of the earlier work’s tortured tale, a response to the symphony’s cliff-hanger end- ing, and, above all, a testament to the healing power of music. Together, they formed the Episode in the Life of an Artist—a daring mix of autobiography and fantasy, symphony and theater, music and literature, that is truly sui generis, a unique work of creative imagination and brazen self-expression. Even during Berlioz’s lifetime, Lélio was rarely performed with its companion. And only once, in a performance staged by fellow pioneer Franz Liszt in 1855, did Berlioz see his complete dramatic work, the Episode in the Life of an Artist, presented as he envisioned it, with the symphony played on the first half, and then with a curtain drawn in front of the musicians as Lélio opens—to suggest that we are hearing the music of the artist’s imagination—and then raised for the Lélio finale, as music itself—the true subject and “hero” of the composition— takes center stage. This week’s performances of the Symphonie fantastique–Lélio double bill attempt to recreate the essence of Berlioz’s own concept—moving from the realm of instru- mental drama in the first half to theater in the second, as an actor takes the stage to tell Berlioz’s tale, while a simple scrim separates reality and creative fantasy—and draws a temporary line between a modern-day Chicago audience and the daring sounds of Berlioz’s imaginary world.

2 Hector Berlioz Born December 11, 1803, Côte-Saint-André, France. Died March 8, 1869, Paris, France.

Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14

come now to the supreme drama Henriette, the familiar French Iof my life,” Berlioz wrote in name for her he had begun to use, his Memoirs, at the beginning of even though they wouldn’t meet the chapter in which he discov- until long after the work was fin- ers Shakespeare and the young ished. On April 16, 1830, he wrote Irish actress Harriet Smithson. to his friend Humbert Ferrand that “Shakespeare, coming up on me he had “just written the last note” unawares, struck me like a thun- of his new symphony, one of the derbolt,” he wrote after attending most shockingly modern works in Hamlet, given in English—a lan- the repertory and surely the most guage Berlioz did not speak—at the astonishing first symphony any Odéon Theater on September 11, composer has given us. “Here is 1827. But it was Smithson appear- its subject,” he continued, “which ing as Ophelia, and then four days will be published in a program and later as Juliet, who captured his distributed in the hall on the day heart and set in motion one of of the concert.” Then follows the the grandest creative outbursts in sketch of a story as famous as any romantic art. in the history of music: the tale Berlioz began the Symphonie of a man who falls desperately in fantastique almost at once, and it love with a woman who embodies immediately became a consuming all he is seeking; is tormented by passion. Throughout its com- recurring thoughts of her, and, in a position, he was obsessed with fit of despair, poisons himself with

Composed Instrumentation Approximate between January and two flutes and piccolo, two performance time April 1830 oboes and two english 49 minutes horns, two clarinets and First performance E-flat clarinet, four CSO recordings December 5, 1830, in Paris bassoons, four horns, two under Sir Georg Solti in 1972 trumpets and two cornets, and 1992 for London, under First CSO three trombones and two Claudio Abbado in 1983 for performance ophicleides (traditionally Deutsche Grammophon, and December 2, 1892, Theodore played by tubas), timpani, under Daniel Barenboim in Thomas conducting, at the snare drum, bass drum, 1995 for Teldec Auditorium Theatre cymbals, low-pitched bells, two harps, strings

3 opium; and, finally, in a horrible unmoved. It is hard to know which narcotic vision, dreams that he is provoked the greater response— condemned to death and witnesses Berlioz’s radical music or its bold his own execution. story. For Berlioz, who always Berlioz knew audiences well; believed in the bond between music he provided a title for each of and ideas, the two were inseparable. his five movements and wrote a In an often-quoted footnote to the detailed program note to tell the program as it was published with story behind the music. A few the score in 1845, he insisted that days before the premiere, Berlioz’s “the distribution of this program to full-scale program was printed in the audience, at concerts where this the Revue musicale, and, for the symphony is to be performed, is performance on December 5, 1830, indispensable for a complete under- two thousand copies of a leaflet standing of the dramatic outline of containing the same narrative were the work.” [Berlioz’s own program distributed in the concert hall, note appears on pages 26A–26B of according to Felix Mendelssohn, our book.] who would remember that night for Even in 1830, the fuss over the the rest of his life because he was so program couldn’t disguise the shaken by the music. No one was daring of the music. Berlioz’s new

Berlioz’s program note for the Symphonie fantastique

Part One: pursue him incessantly like in town, in the country, the Dreams—Passions a double idée fixe. That is beloved image appears The author imagines that the reason for the constant before him and disturbs his a young musician, afflicted appearance, in every peace of mind. with that moral disease that movement of the symphony, a well-known writer calls the of the melody that begins the Part Three: A Scene vague des passions, sees for first Allegro. The passage in the Country the first time a woman who from this state of melancholy Finding himself one embodies all the charms reverie, interrupted by a few evening in the country, he of the ideal being he has fits of groundless joy, to one hears in the distance two imagined in his dreams, and of frenzied passion, with its shepherds piping a ranz he falls desperately in love gestures of fury, of jealousy, des vaches in dialogue. This with her. Through an odd its return of tenderness, its pastoral duet, the scenery, whim, whenever the beloved tears, its religious consola- the quiet rustling of the image appears before the tions—this is the subject of trees gently brushed by mind’s eye of the artist, it the first movement. the wind, the hopes he has is linked with a musical recently found some reason thought whose character, Part Two: A Ball to entertain—all concur passionate but at the same The artist finds himself in in affording his heart an time noble and shy, he the most varied situations— unaccustomed calm, and finds similar to the one he in the midst of the tumult of in giving a more cheerful attributes to his beloved. a party, in the peaceful con- color to his ideas. He This melodic image templation of the beauties reflects upon his isolation; and the model it reflects of nature; but everywhere, he hopes that his loneliness

4 symphony sounded like no other a page of this score that doesn’t music yet written. Its hallmarks contain something distinctive can be quickly listed: five move- and surprising. Some of it can be ments, each with its own title (as explained—Berlioz developed his in Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony), idiosyncratic sense of harmony, for and the use of a signature motive, example, not at the piano, since he the idée fixe representing Harriet never learned to play more than a Smithson that recurs in each few basic chords, but by improvis- movement and is transformed ing on the guitar. But explanation dramatically at the end. But there doesn’t diminish our astonishment. is no precedent in music—just None of this was lost on Berlioz’s three years after the death of colleagues. According to Jacques Beethoven—for his staggeringly Barzun, the composer’s biographer, inventive use of the orchestra, one can date Berlioz’s “unremitting creating entirely new sounds with influence on nineteenth-century the same instruments that had been composers” from the date of the playing together for years; for the first performance of the Symphonie bold, unexpected harmonies; and fantastique. In a famous essay on for melodies that are still, to this Berlioz, Robert Schumann relished day, unlike anyone else’s. There isn’t the work’s novelty; remembering

will soon be over.—But has killed his beloved, that sorcerers, monsters of what if she were deceiving he is condemned and led every kind, come together him!—This mingling of to the scaffold, and that for his funeral. Strange hope and fear, these ideas he is witnessing his own noises, groans, bursts of happiness disturbed execution. The procession of laughter, distant cries by black presentiments, moves forward to the which other cries seem to form the subject of the sounds of a march that is answer. The beloved melody Adagio. At the end, one of now somber and fierce, appears again, but it has the shepherds again takes now brilliant and solemn, lost its character of nobility up the ranz des vaches; the in which the muffled noise and shyness; it is no more other no longer replies.— of heavy steps gives way than a dance tune, mean, Distant sound of thunder— without transition to the trivial, and grotesque: it loneliness—silence. noisiest clamor. At the end is she, coming to join the of the march the first four sabbath.—A roar of joy at Part Four: March to measures of the idée fixe her arrival.—She takes the Scaffold reappear, like a last thought part in the devilish orgy.— Convinced that his love is of love interrupted by the Funeral knell, burlesque unappreciated, the artist fatal blow. parody of the Dies irae poisons himself with opium. [a hymn formerly sung The dose of the narcotic, too Part Five: Dream of in the funeral rites of the weak to kill him, plunges a Witches’ Sabbath Catholic Church], sabbath him into a sleep accompa- He sees himself at the round-dance. The sabbath nied by the most horrible sabbath, in the midst of a round and the Dies irae visions. He dreams that he frightful troop of ghosts, are combined.

5 The program page for the frst performance of the complete Episode in the Life of an Artist, December 9, 1832

6 how, as a child, he loved turn- shortly: Harold in Italy in 1834 and ing music upside down to find Romeo and Juliet in 1839.) At the strange new patterns before his same time, Berlioz also seems to eyes, Schumann commented that foreshadow Mahler, for whom a “right side up, this symphony symphony meant “the building up resembled such inverted music.” of a world, using every available He was, at first, dumbfounded, but technical means.” The Symphonie “at last struck with wonderment.” fantastique did, for its time, stretch Mendelssohn was confused, and the definition of the symphony to perhaps disappointed: “He is really the limit. But it didn’t shatter the a cultured, agreeable man and yet model set by Beethoven. For it was he composes so very badly,” he a conscious effort on Berlioz’s part wrote in a letter to his mother. For to tell his fantastic tale in a way that Liszt, who attended the premiere— Beethoven would have understood, he was just nineteen years old at the and to put even his most outrageous time—and took Berlioz to dinner ideas into the enduring framework afterwards, the only question was of the classical symphony. whether Berlioz was “merely a At the premiere, Berlioz him- talented composer or a real genius. self was on stage—playing in For us,” he concluded, “there the percussion section, as he can be no doubt.” (He voted for often liked to do—to witness the genius.) When Wagner called the audience cheering and stomping Symphonie fantastique “a work that in excitement at the end. Later, would have made Beethoven smile,” in his Memoirs, he admitted that he was probably right. But he the performance was far from continued: “The first movement of perfect—“it hardly could be, with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony would works of such difficulty and after seem an act of pure kindness to me only two rehearsals”—but that after the Symphonie fantastique.” night he knew that he had the In fact, it was Berlioz’s discovery public in his camp, and that with of Beethoven that prompted him to the recent, coveted Prix de Rome write symphonies in the first place. under his belt, his career was about (There are two more which followed to skyrocket.

7 Lélio, ou le retour à la vie (Lélio, or the return to life)

he idea of writing a sequel to Berlioz first mentioned his new Tthe Symphonie fantastique was composition on June 6, 1831, when inspired not by Berlioz’s infatu- he described it to his sister Adèle ation for Harriet Smithson, but as “a work half music, half poetry.” by word that his real-life fiancée, By then, he had made the expedi- Camille Moke, had dumped him tious decision to take pieces of for another man—the famous music he had recently composed piano manufacturer Camille Pleyel. and link them with theatrical Berlioz got the news as he was on monologues which he would write his way to Rome, to take up resi- himself. “This is to be performed dence as the Prix de Rome scholar- after the symphony and will make ship winner. He was immediately a complete concert.” The bulk of plunged into another emotional the work was finished in little more crisis that would work itself out than a week. Berlioz called his new only through the creation of a piece a mélologue, a conflation of the new work of art, in which Camille words monologue and melodrama Moke was quickly divested of her that he borrowed from Thomas own identity and absorbed into the Moore’s “On National Music, A ongoing Smithson fantasy. (He also Melologue,” which he had read in a hatched a plan to murder the par- French translation. ties in question and to kill himself, Long before he decided to call a scheme that was wisely set aside, the work Lélio, Berlioz had his although he apparently did throw title: The Return to Life. “The himself into the sea on a particu- story begins after the “Dream of a larly bleak day in Genoa only to be Witches’ Sabbath,” [the finale of rescued by bystanders who thought the Symphonie fantastique] at the he had accidentally fallen from the moment when the artist returns to city’s ramparts.) life,” he wrote. Berlioz considered

Composed Instrumentation four bassoons, four horns, 1831, revised 1855 actor, tenor, and bass- two trumpets and two baritone soloists; four-part cornets, three trombones First performance chorus; and an orchestra and ophicleide (traditionally December 9, 1832, Paris consisting of two flutes played by tuba), side drums, These are the first CSO and piccolo, two oboes and bass drum, tam-tam, performances english horn, two clarinets, cymbals, harp, piano, strings

8 Lélio “the conclusion and comple- with applause,” although the ment” of the Symphonie fantastique, press response—Berlioz counted and the character of Lélio, a speak- “twenty-one or twenty-two” ing role designed for a “first-rate reviews—ranged from rapture to dramatic actor,” is the same artist outright hatred. Nonetheless, it was who is represented musically in the Lélio, not the Symphonie fantastique, symphony. Lélio is more than just a that made Berlioz the darling of sequel, however—it is a kind of tab- the avant-garde set in Paris, then leau vivant, in which Berlioz’s tale the center of the musical world. As is suddenly brought to life before the Journal des débats reported after our eyes, its essence no longer the premiere, “This young man has relegated to the printed program, from this day forward an audience but spoken and sung, with an actor at his feet.” on stage to portray the hero, who The breakup with Camille gener- is, of course, Berlioz himself. The ated the inspiration for Lélio, but, symphony has become a musical oddly, none of its music. For that, drama for soloists, chorus, and Berlioz turned to six independent orchestra; the theater of Berlioz’s works he had recently composed, imagination is now the concert hall convinced that the power and in which we sit. candor of the linking monologues The Symphonie fantastique and would override the diversity of the Lélio were first performed together musical numbers themselves. The on December 9, 1832—almost first is a setting of Goethe’s ballad exactly two years to the day after “The Fisherman,” composed in the premiere of the symphony. 1827 and scored—stunningly in The printed announcement for this context—for just tenor voice the double bill promised a “grand and solo piano, with one brief inter- concert dramatique,” which was jection from the violins, playing something of an understatement, the now-familiar idée fixe. Berlioz given the extraordinary vision of next turned to a choral reworking Berlioz’s symphonic concept— of Cleopatra’s haunting invocation only eight years after the premiere to the Pharaohs from the cantata of Beethoven’s watershed Ninth Cléopâtre he wrote for the Prix de Symphony. (Berlioz had seen the Rome competition in 1829, which score to Beethoven’s work but now becomes music for the ghost hadn’t yet heard it performed.) scene from Hamlet. This is followed Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, by the brilliant, free-spirited Song Franz Liszt, and Luigi Cherubini of the Brigands for bass-baritone were in the audience, as was and male chorus, probably a new Harriet Smithson, who had unwit- version of the lost “Chansons de tingly inspired the entire evening of pirates,” a setting of Victor Hugo music without knowing it. The next from 1829. (It was while he was day, Berlioz reported to Adèle that in Italy that Berlioz had adopted the concert was an “extraordinary a kind of impetuous and care- success” and that he was “covered free lifestyle he could not even

9 imagine when he lived in Paris.) December 10, 1832, the day The next two numbers are taken after the first performance of the from La mort d’Orphée, Berlioz’s complete Episode in the Life of an first submission for the Prix de Artist. By coincidence, she was Rome in 1827. The first, a gentle performing in Paris at the time—in ode, is scored for tenor solo and another bizarre set of circum- orchestra, with lavish harp accom- stances, she was staying in the same paniment. The second is a hushed apartment on the rue Richelieu Larghetto for orchestra alone. It is where Berlioz himself had lived all the more moving because of its before going to Rome, while he restraint, brevity, and breathtak- had taken up residence across ingly eloquent clarinet solo. For the street, where she had once his finale—the music that emerges roomed. Berlioz had heard nothing from behind the curtain to speak of her whereabouts for two years. directly to us—Berlioz turned to Now, through the intervention the elaborate of a friend, Smithson was given a Fantasy, for box-seat ticket to Berlioz’s concert, voices and where she took in the astonishing orchestra, on story of Berlioz’s passion—all the Shakespeare’s while sitting a mere ten feet from The Tempest the composer—without, as Berlioz that he later recounted, ever thinking “that composed the heroine of this strange and in 1830. The doleful drama might be herself.” prominent But, after intermission, during the piano part performance of Lélio, with its focus was inspired, on Shakespeare, and in particular in happier on Juliet and Ophelia, her most times, by popular roles, Smithson suddenly the playing began to suspect the improbable of Camille truth. “From that moment,” Berlioz Moke (like wrote, “she felt the room reel about A portrait of Harriet Smithson “an army of her; she heard no more but sat in fairies danc- a dream, and at the end returned ing on the home like a sleepwalker, hardly keys”), although her original role, aware what was happening.” in Berlioz’s life and in this music, The next day, she and Berlioz has now been completely erased came face to face for the first by Berlioz’s belief in the power of time. By mid-December they were Shakespeare, love and friendship, romantically involved. “Yes, I love the consolations of art, and the her,” Berlioz wrote to Liszt. “I love restorative power of music. her and I am loved in return.” In February, he asked her to marry arriet Smithson finally entered him, and she accepted. Despite HBerlioz’s life in person on strenuous family objections on both

10 The frst page of Berlioz’s manuscript for the Fantasy on Shakespeare’s The Tempest

11 sides, they were wed on October 3, son, to whom he had previously 1833. They weren’t even happy been indifferent. Harriet died on together for six years. A son, Louis, March 3, 1854. After a respectable was born in August 1834; by the interval, Berlioz married Marie, early 1840s, the couple had drifted who had been his companion for a apart. With her acting career dozen years. The day before their over and her marriage crum- wedding, he finished writing his bling, Harriet grew increasingly memoirs, in which the entire story despondent. “Her state of mind is of his remarkable love for Harriet always deteriorating, her alarm and Smithson is told in painstaking jealousy exceed belief,” Berlioz told detail and Marie is not even men- Adèle. “I need an immense store of tioned once. patience.” Harriet’s jealousy wasn’t unfounded—in 1842, Berlioz made a secret trip to Brussels with a young singer, Marie Recio, whom he had met the previous year—and Berlioz’s patience did eventually begin to wear out. “I don’t know how it will all end; yet it must come Phillip Huscher is the program annota- to an end,” he said in 1844. “My tor for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. life is wrecked.” Later that year, Supertitle system courtesy of DIGITAL he set up house with Marie, the TECH SERVICES, LLC, Portsmouth, relationship with Harriet by now Virginia almost as much a fiction as before they met. Lélio production credits In 1848, Harriet had a stroke Jason Brown, lighting designer from which she never recovered. Patrick Sinozich, supertitle coordinator She was eventually completely Anya Plotkin, production stage manager paralyzed. Berlioz was attentive and caring, visiting her regularly, and he Scrim design and construction by Chicago Scenic Studios, Inc. began to take a new interest in their

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