Music The Operas of Berlioz
Furs has been a good spring for the Berlioz-fancier. Within a few .weeks it has been possible to hear the Requiem, the Symphonie funebre et triomphale, L'Enfance du Christ and La Damnation .de Faust. And last week the Glasgow Grand Opera Society produced on alternate nights his rare operas Benvenuto Ceilini and Beatrice et Benedict. This admirable Society, which last year gave us both parts of Les Troyens, has thus enabled us to hear the complete dramatic output of Berlioz—an illuminating experience.
The average concert-goer, liking some of his works, dis- liking others, and frankly puzzled by many, will want to know., just, what the four operas amount to musically and dramatically., . Contending critics merely add to his confusion. Judicious notices in the more conservative Press barely conceal a temperamental lack of ,sympathy with the Whole world of Berlioz, while at the other extreme Mr. W. J. Turner, professed champion of a Muse in distress, lays about, him with a bludgeoning ardour that .admits no "distinction of values : for him the trumpery Symphonic funebre el triomphale is as wonderful as the Chasse Royale et Orage from Les Troyens.
. The impression of Berlioz received in the concert hall is of a man, of astonishingly original idea;, who frequently gueceeds in shaping „them melodically, harmonically and formally (the orchestration one may take for granted) into glowing creations which are among the triumphs of music. But not always. Suddenly, without warning, the other discon- certing Berlioz appears, in a melody or a harmonic progression not vulgar but completely pointless, having no contact with our musical sensibilities, no feeling, however often one hears it. of inevitability ; there are so many Berlioz tunes which one cannot remember, not because of their subtlety, but because the notes might just as well move in some other way. We have often been told that the fault is in our ears, saturated by the eternal. foursquare melodic type of the Germanic folktong ;. but I, do not now believe this, for we have had little difficulty in grasping the melodic shapes of Spanish or Russian music. The truth seems rather to be that the music, like the man, vices incompletely integrated : from the delightful itiemoires one receives just the same impression of captivating ardour and brilliance interrupted by irrational absurdities.
Between the two operas given last week there is a wide .difference. Benvenuto Ceilini is almost exactly contemporary with Meyerbeer's Lea Huguenots (with which it has some points of kinship), and Berlioz was content to take over the apparatus of .French Grand Opera of the period without troubling to remould it to his own purposes. But in the 1830's he was at the height of his inventive powers, and he filled the conven- tional mould with music of superb brilliance and dramatic verve. The first two acts of Cellini are magnificently vital : the first intimate and sparkling ; the second devoted to the kaleidoscopic crowd scenes of the Carnival, brilliant, swaggering, and superbly effective in the theatre. Some feebleness in the characterisation of the hero could never have killed music like this ; for that it needed the muddled inadequacies of the last act.
• For Beatrice I see no future on the commercial stage. The music, in contrast to the high spirits of CeUini, is, with all its delicacy and wit, too often the music of a tired man. Berlioz was not old in 1860, but he was prematurely worn ; and he lacked the energy to tackle the formal problems of developing an - intrigue in. music. The plot is nearly all carried on in spoken dialogue, and valuable time wasted by a burlesque of academic polyphony—a joke more pedantic than the pedantry it satirises. Hero and Claudio, whose chequered loves might have been a perfect. foil to the brilliance of the principal figures, -remain the merest lay figures. But the opera, though unsatisfyingly static, contains many exquisite Pages- - I wish I had space left to comment on the excellent Glasgow productions of both works, the effective settings and costumes, and the fine conducting of -Dr. Erik Chisholm, to whose en- thusiasm we owe all this admirable activity. Before the week was over he had already called the first rehearsal for next year's production of Busoni's Turandot.
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