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Hector Berlioz: Les Troyens
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Berlioz was granted the Cross of the Legion of Honor probably due to this last work. By 1840 his country commissioned him to write a tribute to "July Days" victims which resulted in: Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphale. And when his next work in 1841, a musical adaptation of Invitation to the Dance by Weber was presented, he met Glinka at the performance. While he was working on perfecting the opera Der Freischïtz he learned that Hamburg raved at his Les Frances-Juges, and St. Petersburg was agog over Requiem. But, these were times where all recogntion was not so upbeat. He was hounded by his contemporary versions of the tattle-tale tabloids that are so nagging for the famous today.
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About 1841 Berlioz reached a turning-point in his career. In that year the only music of his publicly performed in Paris was the set of recitatives composed for Weber’s Der Freischütz in order to make it acceptable to the Opéra’s ban on spoken dialogue. At the same time reports of performances abroad were increasingly common. The Requiem, for example, was heard in St Petersburg, while smaller works, such as the overtures, especially Les francs-juges, were becoming more frequently heard in England and Germany. He still withheld publication of the symphonies to prevent performances outside his control, so that it was growing urgent to go abroad in person, and to reinforce a developing international reputation. At the same time the frustrations of Paris made themselves more keenly felt, with the brighter enthusiasms of 1830 already receding and bourgeois tastes daily more evident, especially in the theatre.
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Berlioz's magnificent opera Les Troyens à Carthage (The Trojans at Carthage, 1863) has been produced for American television (1983) with Tatiana Troyanos, Jessye Norman, and Plácido Domingo. Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) quotes the aria "Vallon sonore" from this opera. Berlioz's exquisite opera La Damnation de Faust received a Japanese TV production in 1999. Seventeen other features quote Berlioz including À double tour (1959) (Romeo et Juliette), and the Hungarian drama Rákóczi induló (Rakoczi March, 1933). ~ "Blue" Gene Tyranny, All Movie Guide
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Berlioz composed the opera Benvenuto Cellini in 1836, and was to spend a lot of effort and money in the following decades trying to have it performed to a successful reception. The piece which followed was one of his most enduring, the Grande Messe des morts, which was first performed at Les Invalides[37] in December of that year.[38] Its gestation was difficult due to the nature of the commission - as it was paid for by the state,[35][27] much bureaucracy had to be endured. There was ... opposition from Luigi Cherubini, who was at the time the music director of the Paris Conservatoire. Cherubini felt that a government-sponsored commission should naturally be offered to himself rather than the young Berlioz, who was considered an eccentric.[4] (It should be noted, however, that regardless of the animosity between the two composers, Berlioz learned from and admired Cherubini's music,[39] such as the requiem.)[40] Benvenuto Cellini was premiered at the Paris Opéra on 10 September, but was a failure due to a hostile audience.[26][31]
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Berlioz had always had a passion for the Latin poet Virgil. In 1856 he spent a long time writing a long opera in five acts called Les Troyens (The Trojans). He knew it would be almost impossible to find anyone who would put on a performance. It only became possible in 1863 after he had divided the work into two parts. After that it was 30 years before the opera was performed again. It contains some of his best music.
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Berlioz was widely read and, although his two literary idols were Virgil and Shakespeare, he was familiar with French, German, and English contemporary literature. As a writer he is best known for his extraordinarily evocative Mémoires (1865). He ... wrote some of his own opera libretti (Les Troyens, Béatrice et Bénédict) and was a highly respected music critic for much of his life (1834-62). His motivation in becoming a critic was both financial (for many years it was his chief source of income) and the need for a public venue in which to defend his ideals. No other French music critic of the time wrote as well or as much as Berlioz, and selections of his best criticism and short stories were published in his lifetime.
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Les Troyens