The history of Berlioz’s discovery of Shakespeare is resumed with brevity and poetry at the opening of chapter 3 of the
Mémoires, whose title alone tells much of the story: “Apparition de Shakespeare. Miss Smithson. Mortel amour”—“The Appearance of Shakespeare. Miss Smithson. Fatal Attraction”: “The effect her prodigious talent upon my imagination and upon my heart,” writes Berlioz, of the then celebrated actress, in words that he considered confessional (as we know from their exclusion from the excerpts that appeared in the press), “or, more precisely, the effect of her dramatic genius, is comparable only to the cataclysm wreaked upon me by the poet of whom she was the admirable interpreter. I am unable to say anything more.”
1 Mémoires, 225. The reference is of course to the arrival in Paris of the English acting troupe, in September 1827, for a series of performances of which the first seven took place over the span of a fortnight: September 11:
Hamlet;
September 13:
Hamlet; September 15:
Romeo and Juliet; September 18:
Othello;
September 20:
Romeo and Juliet;
September 22:
Hamlet;
September 25:
Othello.
Harriet Smithson, at the time twenty-seven years old, took the roles of Ophelia, Juliet, and Desdemona. She would later play Cordelia in
King Lear,
Portia in
The Merchant of Venice,
Queen Elizabeth in
Richard III, and Lady Macbeth in
Macbeth. Charles Kemble, at the time fifty-two, played Hamlet, Romeo, and Othello. Berlioz tells us explicitly that he saw
Hamlet and
Romeo and Juliet, the two plays that, for the next forty years, would most mark his career as a writer. In his books and articles, quotations from Shakespeare abound, as I have said earlier in this book. But
Romeo and Juliet led to one of his most avant-garde compositions, the “dramatic symphony”
Roméo et Juliette;
and
Hamlet,
as I noted in the previous chapter,
marks
Le Retour à la vie, the
Marche funèbre pour la dernière scène d’Hamlet,
and
La Mort d’Ophélie. Othello, too, had a profound impact on his life and work, not so much by jealousy as by a fascination with revenge. He does not speak of
Othello in this context, but it is probable that, in 1827, he saw
Othello as well.
2 Kolb, “Berlioz’s Othello,” 249. In a letter dated January 25, 1829, François-Guillaume Andrieux—who had just become Secrétaire Perpétuel of the Académie Française and whose literature course at the Collège de France Berlioz was enthusiastically auditing at the time—spoke to Rouget de Lisle of an opera libretto based on
Othello that Rouget, perhaps on Andrieux’s recommendation, hoped would be set by Berlioz.
3 Mémoires, 165, 286.The Shakespearean tragedies themselves, with their antitheses of gravitas and jest, provoked a new war in Paris between the classicists and romanticists, something first treated in detail in the still vital
Le Théâtre anglais à Paris by Joseph-Léopold Borgerhoff. At the time, the French public, including the
crème de la crème of the writers and poets, was especially impressed by the natural, life-like performances of the English actors, and by their pantomimic gestures, which seemed exaggerated in comparison to those of the French tradition. Harriet Smithson’s comportment was even compared favorably with that of the newly celebrated diva, Marie Malibran, who was making her début at the same time: both women played Desdemona (in Shakespeare and Rossini, respectively), one played Juliet and one played Romeo (in the opera by Zingarelli). The “spontaneity,” “inspiration,” “excesses,” and even the “convulsions” of both, as Céline Frigau Manning has written, were remarked upon at the time by various observers.
4 Manning, “Shakespeariennes,” 25. For Smithson, the review of the opening performance of
Hamlet in the
Journal des débats of September 13, 1827, is representative of many:
Miss Smithson is an Ophelia as affecting as she is lovely. She weeps and she causes one to weep. The very sound of her voice, her pantomime, her facial expressions, everything about her is in perfect harmony. With Charles Kemble, she shared the honors of the evening.
Like other classicists of his generation, the author of this article points to a certain lack of unity in the drama, but he fully appreciates Hamlet’s famous monologue, “imprinted with a disturbing and depressing philosophy,” as he puts it, as well as the “entire role of Ophelia,” even if this role “distorts” the action while simultaneously “embellishing it.” Whatever their intention, these words were set down by a man who signs only “C” in the newspaper: he was Pierre Duvicquet, a lawyer and man of letters, the successor of Jullien-Louis Geoffroy as drama critic at the
Débats and the predecessor on that beat of Jules Janin, who became one of Berlioz’s great friends.
5 Livre du centenaire du journal des débats: 1789–1889 (Paris: Plon, 1889), 608.On the other hand, Lady Granville—the wife of the British ambassador in Paris and a well-bred society matron whose ancient and aristocratic family later produced such celebrities as Winston Churchill and Diana, Princess of Wales—found Smithson’s accent and habits of speech rather vulgar. This matter is taken up by today’s authority on the subject, Peter Raby, who affirms that the actress’s articulation was surely not that of the British upper classes in the early decades of the new century.
6 Raby, “Shakespeare in Paris,” 216–217; and Raby, Fair Ophelia. Is this something that was available to Duvicquet, or to Berlioz, at the time? In the touching obituary for Smithson that he wrote in the
Journal des débats on March 20, 1854, Jules Janin recalled explicitly her “voix d’or” —her “golden voice”—evidence that for the Frenchman, Harriet’s expression was just fine.
Along with the exceptional comedy of The Merchant of Venice, played six times in 1828 by Smithson and her English partners, the plays that Berlioz knew best, and that encapsulated for him the double idée fixe of Smithson and Shakespeare, were the tragedies. If Much Ado About Nothing was played in France during Berlioz’s lifetime, the performance has left no trace. The character of Beatrice was the object of a brilliant analysis of the play by the fanatically royalist writer Jean-Joseph-François Poujoulat, in La Quotidienne of August 29, 1838, in his series on “Les Femmes de Shakespeare,” and Berlioz might well have seen it. Poujoulat’s description of the banter of the two principals, minimizing the nefarious role of Don John, could easily serve as a résumé of Berlioz’s opera. Otherwise, on the literally hundreds of occasions that the title of the play is found in the newspapers from the eighteen-twenties through the eighteen-sixties, “beaucoup de bruit pour rien” serves invariably to signify precisely what you might think: a lot of hubbub, usually political, of the useless and unnecessary kind!
As for the separate publication of the play, as early as February 4, 1823, Le Miroir des spectacles announced that “a six-person committee of translators has for some time been attempting to enrich the French language with the Shakespearean tragedy [sic] of Much Ado About Nothing [the title is given first in English, then in French].” The committee’s efforts seem to have been in vain; no separate edition appeared, not even in the series (mentioned in the previous chapter) published in English or French or bilingually by Madame Vergne, in the Place de l’Odéon, between September 1827 and February 1828: this included Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and Richard III, all of the texts conforming to those recited by the English players led by Smithson and Kemble. In the eighteen-twenties, then, the only French version of Much Ado that would have been available was the one included in volume 7 of the Œuvres complètes de Shakespeare, traduites de l’anglais par Letourneur (1776–1783) in the edition newly revised by François Guizot and Amédée Pichot and published in thirteen volumes printed in Paris, by Ladvocat, in 1821.
In order to consult the original English text, something I believe he wished to do, Berlioz would presumably have taken up volume 2 of the best-known edition of the era,
The Dramatic Works of Shakespeare edited by George Stevens and published in London, in nine volumes, by Josiah Boydell and George Nicol. The preface to this edition by Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson is dated 1803. After 1835—because we know that, in May of that year, one of the composer’s admirer’s offered him a one-volume English edition of the plays,
7 CG 2:240. no doubt
The Dramatic Works of W. Shakspeare [
sic] that I mentioned in the previous chapter, published in Paris by Baudry in 1829, 1830, and again in 1835—Berlioz would have been able to read
Much Ado,
not in a library or reading room, but at home. Years later, after July 1855— when John Ella gave to Berlioz another one-volume English edition of the plays,
8 CG 5:126. no doubt
The Works of William Shakspere [
sic] that I also mentioned earlier, published in London by George Cox in 1849, 1852, and again in 1854—Berlioz would have had an
embarras du choix. The Knight version, with textual explanations at the bottom of each page, was the most popular mid-century edition.
It is in his letter to his friend Joseph d’Ortigue of January 19, 1833, that, out of the blue, and with ironic alacrity, Berlioz mentions
Much Ado for the first time: “À propos”—he has just said that he is roasting in the fires of hell because of his infernal obsession with Miss Smithson—“I intend to compose a charming and delightful Italian opera based on Shakespeare’s comedy
Much Ado About Nothing. This time, I should like to ask you to
lend me the volume that contains this play.”
9 CG 2:68 (my emphasis). In question is volume 7 of the Ladvocat edition of 1821. D’Ortigue had just published the first authorized biography of Berlioz in the
Revue de Paris of December 23, 1832, based upon the detailed notes that the composer had supplied. That biography mentioned nothing at all about a forthcoming Italian opera.
Four days later, in a letter to his sister Adèle of January 23, 1833, Berlioz again mentions his new project: “I intend to make my début at the Théâtre-Italien, with whose administration I am on very good terms. […] I have just now gone over there with the outline of a libretto that I have drafted myself. Those fellows will read it and, if it suits them, they will immediately put me in touch with an Italian poet who will write the verses under my close supervision.”
10 CG 2:69.From these messages we learn that between the 19th and 23rd of January, Berlioz sketched a libretto based on
Much Ado About Nothing, a play with which he was already familiar, and that, on the 23rd, he gave the sketch to “ces monsieurs,” that is, to the directors of the Théâtre-Italien, Édouard Robert and Carlo Severini, whom we met in chapter 4. Berlioz does indeed seem to have been on friendly terms with these gentlemen. During the summer of 1833, he was hoping for an Italian translation of his earlier opera,
Les Francs-Juges, “if Severini decides to take the risk.”
11 Berlioz to Humbert Ferrand, August 1, 1833 (CG 2:109). Two years later, in a review of
L’Éclair for
Le Rénovateur of December 23, 1835,
Berlioz would indulge in some rather lengthy wordplay on the surname Robert—the Joseph-Alexandre Robert who had lately invented a breech-loading rifle—the so-called “fusil Robert,” which figures in Halévy’s comic opera—and the Édouard Robert who was in charge of the Théâtre-Italien:
—Ah, Monsieur Robert makes rifles, you will say! I thought he made only Italian operas! —No, we are talking here not about the great Robert, do not be confused! We are talking about the simple gunsmith, who has the audacity to call himself by the same name! This fellow has made neither a
Cenerentola nor a
Gazza ladra nor a
Semiramide nor a
Barbiere nor a
Pirata nor a
Sonnambula nor a
Puritani nor a
Bravo, and not even a
Norma!
I repeat, he makes nothing other than rifles! But they are rifles that never fail to fire, that never fizzle out, that have a long range—something that cannot always be said of the operas made by his namesake!
12 The article is reprinted in CM 2:371.This suggests to me a kind of
entente cordiale between the youthful composer and the director of one of the most exalted theaters of the capital. Berlioz’s principal biographers do not dwell on the point,
13 Macdonald, Berlioz, 177; Holoman, Berlioz, 142; Cairns, Berlioz, 2: 667. but the fact that he was “on good terms” with the administration of the Théâtre-Italien, in January 1833, is surely the reason that he and his new wife were able, nine months later, to organize there a grand dramatico-musical entertainment that included appearances by the actors Firmin (the creator of the role of Hernani) and Madame Dorval (who rose to prominence as Amélie in Ducange and Dinaux’s
Trente Ans ou La Vie d’un joueur of 1827, a popular melodrama which, in 1830, Berlioz preferred to
Hernani),
14 CG 1:322. along with the celebrated musicians Alexis Dupont and Franz Liszt. More important, even earlier, on April 2, 1833, the Théâtre-Italien was the scene of a benefit concert for Harriet Smithson that also featured such stars as Chopin and Liszt. Is it not logical to suppose, then, that it was Harriet, at the time playing Lady Teazle in Sheridan’s
School for Scandal,
who had suggested to Berlioz, in January of that year, that he interest himself in
Much Ado?
After all, in that very month, Berlioz was feverish and exhilarated because of his newfound relationship with the English actress. We do not know what the two of them discussed during those early weeks of love made known, each searching for words in the other’s language, but of all possible subjects, Shakespeare was clearly the most obvious. Perhaps Harriet found in Hector the incarnation of a frantic French Benedict, suddenly surprised to find himself loved by a heretofore distant and disbelieving Beatrice!
Be this as it may, the project of an Italian opera on
Much Ado did not come to fruition in 1833. Nor did it see the light of day in 1852, when Berlioz, in London, sketched out a new libretto distantly based on the play,
15 NBE 3:299–300. perhaps encouraged by the impresario John Mitchell, the then director of St. James’s Theatre, to whom Berlioz entrusted an English translation of his new book,
Les Soirées de l’orchestre.
16 CG 4:173. Six years later, in May 1858, Berlioz spoke to Édouard Bénazet, the director of the casino in Baden-Baden, about “a small opera designed for the opening of a theater, which he is in the process of building, and which will be inaugurated in August 1860.”
17 Berlioz to his sister Adèle, May 28, 1858 (CG 5:575). Berlioz had met Bénazet many years earlier, in 1844, when the impresario, in Paris at the time in order to bid on the newspaper
Le Constitutionnel (which was soon sold to Louis Véron),
18 Le Commerce (March 16, 1844). had asked him to prepare a “festivalesque” concert in Baden-Baden in the latter part of August 1844.
19 Berlioz to Louis Schlösser, April 20, 1844 (CG 8:235). Berlioz accepted the invitation, but had to renege when preparations for his own festival concert—for the great Paris industrial exhibition, on August 1, 1844—took precedence. It would not be until August 1853, by which time Édouard Bénazet had been the King of the Baden “Conversation House” for some seven years (his father, Jacques, having died in 1848) that Berlioz would there give a concert.
In 1858, Bénazet, whom Berlioz would now regard with sincere admiration, asked that the composer make a setting of a libretto by Offenbach’s regular collaborator, the poet and dramatist Édouard Plouvier, whom Berlioz had known since the eighteen-forties.
20 Edouard Plouvier to Berlioz, probably 1844 (CG 8:609). The subject was to be a
Légende du diable qui pleure based on an episode from the Thirty Years’ War. At first attracted to the tale, Berlioz gradually became disenchanted, as he told a friend on October 2, 1858.
21 CG 5:600. He decided firmly against it at the end of 1859: “No, I shall not set Plouvier’s
Légende,” he told Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, on December 2, “I have just written to him to release me from my obligation to do so.”
22 CG 6:75. The libretto was eventually set by Henri Litolff, as
Nahel, and premiered in Baden-Baden on August 10, 1863. On September 3, in the
Débats,
Berlioz praised the work of the poet and the composer as “vast and profound.”
At what moment, very precisely, did Berlioz turn back to
Much Ado About Nothing?
In March 1858, in a review of Halévy’s
La Magicienne that appeared in the
Débats on the 24th, Berlioz describes the action of act 3, in which the protagonist, René, is persuaded to believe in the infidelity of his fiancée, Blanche, by a mystification involving an impersonator who wears Blanche’s clothing. Berlioz observes that the bit is based on act 3, scene 3 of
Much Ado,
where Borachio, a follower of the evil Don John, impersonates the principal character, Claudio, and announces his love, not to Claudio’s fiancée, Hero, but to Margaret, Hero’s lady-in-waiting. Borachio knows, of course, as the real Claudio does not, that Margaret is dressed in Hero’s clothing.
23 Journal des débats (March 24, 1858); CM 9:356. That Berlioz mentions “la scène du troisième acte” suggests that he has recently had the play in hand. Still, not until October 23, 1860, in a letter to his son, does Berlioz speak decisively of the new work: “Yesterday, I worked for some seven hours on the little one-act opera I have undertaken;
I cannot recall if I have mentioned this to you.” “I cannot recall” suggests that he had been at work for some time, perhaps eight months, perhaps more. He goes on about the new composition: “It is very pretty, but very difficult to get right. I still have a good deal of work to do on the libretto; I rarely have the time to concentrate on it. The music will come along in due time.”
24 CG 6:169 (my emphasis).It is possible that Berlioz had begun work in March 1860, when he accepted the Dutch composer Edouard Silas’ offer of the dedication of his new oratorio,
Joash. Silas had also asked Berlioz to serve as godfather to his son, whom he wished to name Hector.
25 “A Friend of Berlioz,” The Musical Herald (December 1, 1903), 372.But your son must not have a godfather who is so far away; this would only be an illusion. Furthermore, I neither believe in nor practice the Catholic faith, I even
protest my non-belief, which means in this case that I am a
protestant. In point of fact I am a Nothingist, as are so many honest Americans. Except that my Nothingism is not at all a religion.
26 CG 6:134.Now, Berlioz here would seem to be bantering about the xenophobic and anti-Catholic political party that briefly rose to prominence in the United States in the eighteen-fifties, under the ridiculous name of “Know-Nothings.” But it does occur to me, considering his forthcoming work on the opera, that he might already at this time have been reflecting upon the pregnant “nothing” of
Much Ado. One month later, on April 4, 1860, while explaining to his uncle Marmion that
Les Troyens was “finished, revised, polished, and twice corrected,” that he was exhausted and desirous only of sleep, he added: “Fort heureusement je n’ai
rien en train dans ce moment”—“At this moment, fortunately, I have
nothing on my plate.”
27 CG 6:143. My loose translation suggests a
double entendre regarding Shakespeare’s great title that may, I admit, not have occurred to the composer.
If, as I have suggested, it was Harriet Smithson who called Berlioz’s attention to
Much Ado in 1833, then perhaps it was another artist who pointed him back to the play in 1860. In addition to Pauline Viardot, whom he saw frequently in that year, and who later attended the rehearsals of
Béatrice et Bénédict in Baden-Baden at the time of the première, Richard Wagner, too, was swimming in Berlioz’s ken at the time. Reading Wagner’s letter to Berlioz of May 22, 1860, in which the German composer thanks Berlioz for his articles on
Fidelio,
which had appeared in the
Débats of May 19 and May 22, one has the distinct impression that his admiration for the Frenchman’s artistry is profound and sincere, something verified in Wagner’s letter to Liszt of the same day.
28 CG 6:154. Berlioz’s reply, too—in which, with the frankness of a friend, he told the German master not to address him as “cher maître”: “cela m’agace” (“that drives me nuts!”)
29 CG 6:156.—suggests genuine, if not lasting, amity. Only a few weeks later, when Wagner and Viardot sang excerpts from
Tristan, with Karl Klindworth at the piano, the sole persons in attendance were Wagner’s future patron, Maria Kalergis (it is to her that he dedicated the second edition of his infamous
Das Judentum in der Musik), and Berlioz. Is it conceivable that the two men discussed
Much Ado About Nothing at the time? Wagner’s
Das Liebesverbot is founded on another comedy,
Measure for Measure, whose free and easy manner, Wagner had mentioned to Meyerbeer in 1837, ought to appeal more readily to French sensibilities than it does to German
Geschamck,
30 Wagner to Meyerbeer, February 4, 1837, in Wagner, Selected Letters, 43. and whose substance, he admitted, he had “robbed,” as did Berlioz
Much Ado,
“of its “prevailing earnestness.”
31 Wagner, “Autobiographical Sketch,” 10. This is what renders it conceivable that the author of
Tannhäuser, who admired Beethoven and Shakespeare no less than the French composer, and who had earlier not hesitated to suggest to Berlioz the subject of an opera,
32 Wagner to Liszt, September 8, 1852, in Wagner, Selected Letters, 268–269. might have encouraged Berlioz to adapt
Much Ado About Nothing:
we know, from Cosima Wagner’s diaries, that the play is one that Richard Wagner knew well and much admired.
33 See Wagner (Cosima), Cosima Wagner’s Diaries, 1:864; 2:807.From Berlioz’s correspondence, beginning in the autumn of 1860, we can follow his day-by-day work on
Béatrice et Bénédict. I have mentioned the letter to his son of October 23, in which he speaks of how much writing remained to be done. Less than three weeks later, on November 10, he reported that he had made great headway: “I have now completed the little opera I told you about based on Shakespeare’s play
Much Ado About Nothing. It’s called
Bénédict et Béatrice [
sic]. It’s very lighthearted and very pretty, as you shall see. The music is now coming to me so rapidly that I cannot decide which bit to do first. I’ve just completed two numbers in only a couple of days. But please say nothing about this to anyone, because it is very easy for someone to steal your ideas.”
34 CG 8:494. What thief could Berlioz have been thinking about? Gounod, whose
Faust came along thirteen years after his own, and whose
Roméo et Juliette was seven years down the line?
On November 12, Berlioz made another progress report to his son:
I can hardly keep up with the musical numbers of my little opera, because the music comes to me so quickly! And each number seems to want to take precedence over the next. Sometimes I take up a new one even before the previous one is finished. At this point, I have completed four numbers, and have five more to do. You ask me how I managed to reduce Shakespeare’s five-act play into a one-act opéra-comique. In fact I took only the principal theme from the play; the rest is of my own devising. The action consists purely and simply of persuading Béatrice and Bénédict, who loathe each other, that in fact the one is drawn to the other, and thus to persuade both that they are truly in love. It’s a perfect little comedy, as you shall see. And I have added some tomfoolery of my own and some musical baggage as well, which is too involved to explain to you here.
35 CG 6:175.Let me more succinctly resume what came next in 1860. On November 27: “I am finishing a one-act opera on a subject I borrowed from Shakespeare.” November 28: “I am completing a one-act opera.” November 29: “I am finalizing the music.”
Then, in 1861. January 2: “[Bénazet] has engaged me for Baden-Baden.” January 28: “My little opera
Béatrice et Bénédict is moving along.” February 14: “I went to read the libretto to Monsieur Bénazet.” June 2: “I have not yet completed the score of
Béatrice.” June 8: “I have added a new scene.” July 6: “Little by little I am finishing a one-act opera for the new theater in Baden-Baden, whose construction is just now coming to an end. I have based this one act on Shakespeare’s tragi-comedy entitled
Beaucoup de bruit pour rien. Prudently, however, my opera is entitled
Béatrice et Bénédict.” November 4: “While waiting [for news of
Les Troyens], I work on the opera that Bénazet commissioned.” December 7: “I have just completed a
two-act opera designed for the new theater at Baden-Baden. I have only the overture to finish.”
36 CG 6:190, 194, 200, 218, 225; CG 8:507; CG 6:238, 250, 255–256, 262.Then, again, in 1862. February 4: “[The opera] will be played next August, on the 5th or 6th.” February 6: “
Béatrice et Bénédict will appear in Baden-Baden on August 6.” March 16: “Every Tuesday, we rehearse
Béatrice.” April 9: “The day before yesterday, during a
soirée with many people in attendance, we performed two numbers, a duet and an aria.” June 12: “[The opera] will be played in Baden-Baden on August 9.” June 20: “We rehearse on Monday [June 23] at half-past noon.” June 30: “It’s impossible for me to leave Paris because of the rehearsals.” July 12: “Yesterday, we rehearsed at the Opéra-Comique.” July 22: “It took me quite a while to train the singers. Now, I must face the difficult task of training the orchestra,
car c’est un caprice écrit avec la pointe d’une aiguille et qui exige un excessive délicatesse d’exécution.”
37 CG 6:270, 272, 276, 281, 287, 290, 298, 204, 311, 313, 317, 320 (my emphasis). The French phrase is perhaps familiar: it is cited at every hearing of the opera, live and recorded. What Berlioz means is that the work, “written with a crystalline pen, is a whimsical entertainment whose performance requires exceptional delicacy.” He speaks as one who knows his musicians, and who knows the difficulty of convincing them to play
vivo,
leggiero,
and
pianissimo.The new opera was given in Baden-Baden on August 9 and 11. Despite his anxiety and his continuing poor health, Berlioz was entirely satisfied by the result. None other than Charles Gounod wrote of the work that is “absolutely perfect and lovely.”
38 CG 6:326. At the end of August, Berlioz added to what had become a second act (in November 1861) a trio for the women, Héro, Béatrice, and Ursula (Berlioz’s transformation of Shakespeare’s Margaret). Here, in “Je vais d’un cœur d’amant,” Berlioz, always ready with a quotation, amused himself by adding to Ursula’s part a line from act 3, scene 3 of
Othello, “la jalousie, ce monster aux yeux verts”—a phrase deriving from Iago’s warning: “O beware, my lord, of jealousy,
it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meet it feeds on.” Berlioz also added a chorus, “Viens! Viens, de l’hymnée,” which serves to put Béatrice into the amorous mood that will soon lead to her acceptance of Bénédict’s offer of marriage, “despite herself,” and only in order “to save his life”! The score, naturally dedicated to Bénazet, was published in Paris, by Brandus et Dufour, in January 1863.