Berlioz: Béatrice et Bénédict Overture

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

Overture: Béatrice et Bénédict


Berlioz spent most of the 1850s composing and attempting unsuccessfully to secure a production of his epic opera Les Troyens. The strain took its toll, and by 1858 he was showing the first signs of the intestinal illness that would eventually kill him. At the same time, following his divorce from the actress and inspiration for the Symphonie fantastique, Harriet Smithson, he remarried. His second wife, Marie Recio, died suddenly in June 1862, a few months after he completed what would prove to be his last opera, Béatrice et Bénédict.
 
Béatrice, in contrast to Les Troyens, quickly secured a performance and was unveiled in August 1862 in Baden-Baden. Ever the perfectionist, Berlioz found much to vex him in the production, from his difficulties in persuading the musicians to play quietly enough to the inadequate size of the orchestra pit, but despite all this the production was a success. Berlioz conducted it himself, despite his advancing illness, and later remarked that his conducting, which in his earlier years had been criticised for its indiscipline, was greatly improved by his health; the pain forced him to be “less excitable.”

If Les Troyens is Berlioz’s self-consciously grand, tragic magnum opus, then Béatrice et Bénédict is in character its polar opposite, an effervescent, exuberant comedy whose wit and lightness of touch belies the pain he was in as he wrote. The libretto, written by Berlioz himself, is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. (Some commentators have suggested, somewhat unkindly, that Berlioz’s adaptation amounts to “Much Ado About Nothing without the Ado.”) Berlioz’s fascination with Shakespeare was a recurring obsession throughout his career, and it is entirely fitting that a Shakespeare based work should prove to be his swansong.

Opera overtures at this time tended to be pot-pourris of themes from the ensuing drama. Berlioz here weaves together themes from six arias and ensemble pieces from the opera, but with rather more care than most of his contemporaries. The result is a satisfying and coherent piece that has found a regular home in the concert hall.