Berlioz's Swan-Song: Towards a Criticism of Béatrice et Bénédict

Abstract

Béatrice et Bénédict is the last work of a great romantic. Yet, like Verdi's Falstaff with which it is tempting to make comparisons, it is a neo-classical comic opera. With both composers surprise at this last turn in their careers-is tempered by knowledge of admirable comedy in earlier operas (such as Un ballo in maschera and Benvenuto Cellini); and Berlioz's overt nec-classicism is perhaps, after Les troyens, hardly surprising at all. What is remarkable is that Béatrice et Bénédict is Berlioz's only Shakespearean opera, and one of only two full-length works based on the poet he idolized for more than forty years. It is not the first time, however, that Berlioz had dealt with Shakespeare's comedies. Although his first introduction to Shakespeare, and his profoundest experience of him in the theatre, concerned Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, he was also inspired by plays he had only read, and his first Shakespearean composition was the fantasy-overture The Tempest (1830), followed by the overture King Lear (1831). Lines from The Merchant of Venice appear in Les troyens (no. 37). Berlioz almost certainly never saw Much Ado About Nothing, but as early as 1833 he asked a friend to lend him a copy, as he planned ‘a very merry Italian opera’ on the subject. The idea resurfaced in 1852. A full scenario survives from that period, but it bears no relation to the opera which reached the stage at Baden in 1862 beyond the two principal characters. The opera reached its final form in 1863, just thirty years after its conception; after the first performances Berlioz added two new numbers, of which the first, the Trio no. 11, is his last substantial composition, his swan-song.