Sunday Classics: Berlioz tackles that most basic and intimate issue, the terrifying vulnerability of owning up to loving

"There will undoubtedly be no mistake regarding the genre of this work. Although voices are used often in it, it is neither an opera in concert form nor a cantata, but a symphony with choruses."

-- Hector Berlioz, start of the Preface to Roméo et Juliette

by Ken

We have to establish at the outset that Berlioz must surely have been joshing in this opening paragraph of the Preface to his "dramatic symphony" Roméo et Juliette. It's hard to think of any piece of music whose genre is more likely to be misunderstood. In fact, I can't tell you how often I've seen this mistranslated to say the opposite: that there doubtless will be confusion regarding the genre of this work. And there's confusion because, as he so often did, Berlioz invented the form himself, as his perception of the requirements of the story dictated, and the piece presents a constant juxtaposition of elements that hardly any other composer might have thought of.

The two exceptions that leap to mind are Gustav Mahler and Dmitri Shostakovich, whose wind-ranging imaginations ran to a similar sort of juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated or even incompatible elements -- made inseparably related and compatible by the power of those imaginations. We've already talked a bit about these kinds of juxtapositions in consecutive Christmas Eve posts from 2008 and 2009 focusing on Berlioz' improbably sublime, and really not at all sacred, oratorio The Childhood of Christ. The charge you will sometimes hear leveled at any or all of these composers is that their music is "uneven," when in fact I would argue that what it is is extremely heterodox -- these guys will throw any resource they can summon to rise to a communicative challenge. Which means that audiences are often left playing catchup, coming to understand why these disparate elements have been put together and what is achieved. (This subject came up, for example, in our consideration of Shostakovich's strangely wonderful Sixth Symphony.)

In Friday night's Roméo preview, we heard the very opening, the depiction in a fugato for the strings of the violence between the warring Montague and Capulet families, which is interrupted by the Prince's intervention. (That was the first of the series of orchestral excerpts we heard performed by Carlo Maria Giulini and the Chicago Symphony.) Then as the final item in our preview we went back to close to the beginning for our only vocal excerrpt, the aria-like "strophes" sung by the mezzo-soprano in tribute to those "first transports that no one forgets, first declarations, first vows of two lovers under the stars of Italy."

What we didn't hear was the roughly four and a half minutes of music between those two excerpts: chanted narration by the "semi-chorus" ( the composer asked for 14 voices) with, at first, relatively inconspicuous assistance from the mezzo-soprano soloist, who then joins in the story-telling. This little block of music -- completely different in character from what precedes as well as what follows it (that we have three such different musics butted up against each other is a prime Berliozian ploy) -- is one of the most amazing chunklets of music I know, and it's really what I want to talk about today.

In fact I've wanted to talk about since I began writing these posts, and I've never had any confidence in my ability to communicate what makes them so extraordinary to me. I'm not sure I'm any better able to do it now, but sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith. As it happens, the qualities that eventually came to seem so magical to me here sneaked up on me over a period of some years' acquaintance, and while I'm sure there are people who are quicker on the uptake, I'm not sure I can offer a much better route to "getting" it. For me it was hearing the music, over and over, in different performances, some of which proved less uncomprehending than the others, until it exploded in my consciousness.

Let's start by putting the first two pieces of this puzzle together. You may have noticed Friday night that our opening excerpt trailed off rather inconclusively at the end. That's because at this point what Berlioz identifies in the score as "prologue" begins, with the first utterance of the semi-chorus, informing us of the ancient, bloody feud between the houses of Montague and Capulet. At the other end of this narration are the "strophes" sung by the mezzo-soprano, which we heard last night. We're going to stick with the same conductor we heard last night in the strophes, Charles Munch, but we're going to switch recordings. Last night we heard his 1958 stereo version; now we're going to back to the 1953 mono version.

Roméo et Juliette: Part I, Orchestral introduction and narration for semi-chorus with mezzo-soprano solo

SEMI-CHORUS: Ancient hatreds, dormant,
have surged as if from hell.
Capulets, Montagues, two enemy houses,
have crossed swords in Verona.

However, these bloody disorders' course
has been halted by the Prince,
threatening death to those who, despite his orders,
would again have recourse to the justice of swords.

In these instants of calm a ball is given
by the old head of the Capulets.

MEZZO-SOPRANO: Young Romeo, bemoaning his destiny,
comes to wander sadly around the entrance to the palace,
for he's madly in love with Juliet, the daughter
of the enemies of his family.

SEMI-CHORUS with MEZZO-SOPRANO:
Noise from the instruments, melodious singing
emerge from the salons where gold shines,
arousing dancing and joyous cries.

[Music from the ball is heard.]

SEMI-CHORUS: The ball is finished, and when all the noise dies out,
under the arches can be heard
the exhausted dancers singing as they go off in the distance.
Alas! and Romeo sighs,
for he has had to leave Juliet!

Suddenly, in order to breathe again that air that she breathes,
he vaults over the garden walls.

Already on her balcony snow-white Juliet
appears, and believing herself alone until daybreak,
confides her love to the night.

Romeo, trembling with a restless joy,
reveals himself to Juliet,
and from his heart fires break out in their turn.

Margaret Roggero, mezzo-soprano; Harvard Glee Club, Radcliffe Choral Society, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded Feb. 22-23, 1953

What the strangeness as well as seeming plainness of the small-chorus chanting may obscure is that Berlioz has here invented his own form of choral narration, just for this piece, a form that gradually takes on gradations and variations and soon blossoms into something altogether extraordinary, but none of that can happen unless the performers and the audience tune into this rhythmic chant he has concocted. I don't doubt that many listeners will grasp it much quicker than I did, but then, I've heard countless performances in which the conductors, most of them highly respected practitioners, seem to have been quite clueless even as they undertook to commit the music to recording.

One characteristic of this chant, it seems to me, is that it gives an immediate impression of "sameness," of unvaried narrative chant, even though it begins to undergo variation almost immediately. Berlioz seems to me to have been staking out a claim to some kind of timelessness, evoking not just the chorus of Shakespeare's play but those of antiquity, going back at least to the dramas of the ancient Greeks.

[Note: Time cues refer to the Ozawa-DG recording, but the Monteux-Westminster is pretty close.]

NARRATION (semi-chorus with solo mezzo-soprano)

[0:00] SEMI-CHORUS: Ancient hatreds, dormant,
have surged as if from hell.
Capulets, Montagues, two enemy houses,
have crossed swords in Verona.

[0:20] However, these bloody disorders' course
has been halted by the Prince,
threatening death to those who, despite his orders,
would again have recourse to the justice of swords.

[0:52] In these instants of calm a ball is given
by the old head of the Capulets.

[1:04] MEZZO-SOPRANO: Young Romeo, bemoaning his destiny,
comes to wander sadly around the entrance to the palace,
[1:20] for he's madly in love with Juliet, the daughter
of the enemies of his family.

[1:36] SEMI-CHORUS with MEZZO-SOPRANO:
Noise from the instruments, melodious singing
emerge from the salons where gold shines,
arousing dancing and joyous cries.

[1:49] [Music from the ball is heard.]

[2:28] SEMI-CHORUS: The ball is finished, and when all the noise dies out,
under the arches can be heard
the exhausted dancers singing as they go off in the distance.
[2:50] Alas! and Romeo sighs,
for he has had to leave Juliet!

[3:18] Suddenly, in order to breathe again that air that she breathes,
he vaults over the garden walls.

[3:27] Already on her balcony snow-white Juliet
appears, and believing herself alone until daybreak,
confides her love to the night.

[3:56] Romeo, trembling with a restless joy,
[4:00] reveals himself to Juliet,
and from his heart fires break out in their turn.

STROPHES (mezzo-soprano solo with semi-chorus)

[0:00] First transports that no one forgets,
first declarations, first vows
of two lovers.
Under the stars of Italy,
in that warm air without breezes,
which distant orange blossoms scent,
where the nightingale
wastes away with long sighs.

[1:12] What art, in its chosen tongue,
could describe your heavenly delights?
First love, are you not
more exalted than all poetry?
Or rather are you not, in our mortal exile,
that poetry itself
of which Shakespeare alone had the supreme secret,
and which he took with him
[SEMI-CHORUS joining in] to heaven?

[3:00] Happy children with hearts on fire!
Joined in love by the chance
of a single look,
hide it well under the shadow of flowers,
that divine fire that sets you ablaze,
ecstasy so pure
that its words are tears.

[4:11] What king could match the transports
of your chaste delights?
Happy children! and what treasures
could purchase a single one of your sighs?
Ah! savor for a long time that cup of honey,
sweeter than the chalices
from which God's angels, jealous of your delights,
draw happiness
[SEMI-CHORUS joining in] in heaven!

Narration

Strophes

Julia Hamari, mezzo-soprano; New England Conservatory Chorus, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, cond. DG, recorded October 1975

Narration

Strophes

Regina Resnik, mezzo-soprano; London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, Pierre Monteux, cond. Westminster/MCA, recorded June 1962

[The "Strophes" track includes the following choral narration, which establishes that the lovelorn Romeo's friends begin to make fun of him, preparing for Mercutio's Queen Mab fantasy.]

It's amazing how many performances whiff totally on this crucial setup of the entire piece. From the starkness of the setting, and its rhythmic spareness, not to mention the reduced chorus, it seems clear that Berlioz wanted: (a) to establish a musically striking, almost primitive-chant-like narrative mode, and (b) to provide musical space for absolutely clear as well as forceful delivery of the words of this remarkable narration. I can only guess that most performers think that, on the contrary, this is simply an embarrassingly inept span of unmusical drivel that they have to either gussy up, as if it were maybe a Christmas carol, or just slur their way through and hope nobody will notice. (Perhaps the most egregious is the progressive descent into sing-songy gibberish of Colin Davis's numerous recordings.)

I'm sorry I can't offer you the best performance I've heard of this music, from what would appear to be the least probable source: a recording made by Austrian Radio forces under the rarely inspired Italian conductor Lamberto Gardelli (1915-1998), with Brigitte Fassbaender singing the daylights out of the mezzo solos.

Just a few things to note in this chunk of prologue:

* For all the seeming chantlike quality of the choral narration, note how both the choral setting and the accompaniment respond to shifts in tone in the story, though regularly resolving in broad major-key cadences to maintain the aural image of chantlike uniformity.

* Note how the tone personalizes when the story brings in Roméo, starting with the switch to the solo narrative voice of the mezzo-soprano.

* The orchestral music depicting the Capulets' ball should sound familiar. We heard it in expanded form last night in our second orchestral excerpt, from Part II. Which brings us to an important point about the structure of Berlioz' Roméo: In Part I, which as I'm mentioned is in effect a prologue, we go through -- in varying detail -- the entire story of Romeo and Juliet, through their deaths, and then in Parts II and III we go through it again. Let's return to Berlioz' Preface:

If singing figures in [the piece] almost from the beginning, it's in order to prepare the mind of the listener for the dramatic scenes whose feelings and passions are to be expressed by the orchestra. Beyond that it's to introduce little by little in the musical development the choral forces, whose too sudden appearance could have harmed the unity of the composition. Thus the prologue, where -- following the example of the play of Shakespeare himself -- the chorus reveals the plot, it's sung by only 14 voices. Later, offstage, the chorus of just the Capulet men is heard; then during the funeral ceremony the Capulet men and women. At the beginning of the finale, two entire choruses, of Capulets and Montagues, are involved, as well as Father Laurence; and at the end, the three choruses are reunited.

With regard to those "dramatic scenes whose feelings and passions are to be expressed by the orchestra," Berlioz went on to explain more precisely:

If, in the famous scenes of the garden and the cemetery, the dialogue of the two lovers, the asides of Juiet and the impassioned expressions of Romeo, aren't sung, if finally the duets of love and despair are confided to the orchestra, the reasons are numerous and easy to grasp. It is first -- and this motive alone would have provided the author with sufficient justification -- because we're dealing with a symphony and not an opera. Then, duets of this nature having been treated vocally a thousand times and by the greatest masters, it was prudent as well as intriguing to attempt a different mode of expression. It's also because the very sublimeness of that love made portraying it so dangerous for the musician that he had to give his imagination a latitude that the positive sense of sung words wouldn't have allowed him, and recourse to instrumental language, a language richer, more varied, and less fixed, and, by its very vagueness, incomparably more powerful in such a case.

Berlioz even gives us two renderings of Mercutio's evocation of Queen Mab: first a spritely sung version for tenor and chorus, and then in Part II the orchestral scherzo (which again we heard Friday night) that is one of the composer's most popular stand-alone orchestral pieces.

* Finally, with regard to this bit of narration, and I'm afraid here's where my explanatory powers will fail me, there is the amazing depiction of the state of mind of the young lovers on the brink of their surrender to their first love: Juliet alone on her balcony (3:27), and then the love-struck Romeo, unable to contain himself (3:56), summoning more courage than he's ever had in his life and (4:00) revealing himself, totally vulnerable, to Juliet, declaring his love. This is such an extraordinary moment, both in the story and, I suspect, for most every audience member, that it demands an extraordinary response, which Berlioz delivered in the form of the mezzo-soprano strophes, and in particular that remarkable refrain in each stanza (3:00 and 4:11) -- the first moments that invariably grabbed me as I was getting to know the piece.

This is by no means all the Berlioz is up to in Roméo et Juliette For the Finale he has prepared a grand reconciliation between the warring families, brought about by an amazing harangue from Father Laurence (promoted from Shakespeare's humble friar, you'll notice), who shames them into submission, pining the blame on them for the deaths of their treasured children. The composer explained this too in the Preface:

This final scene of the reconciliation of the two families is reserved for the domain of opera or oratorio. It hasn't been played on any stage since the time of Shakespeare; but it is too beautiful, too musical, and it crowns a work of the nature of this one too well for the composer to have thought of treating it otherwise.

But I'm afraid we'll have to save that for another time.


MEANWHILE THE OLDER & WISER BEATRICE & BENEDICK
FIND THEMSELVES IN MUCH THE SAME PREDICAMENT

I'm not sure I really need to add much to what I had to say last night about the coming together of the title characters in Berlioz' Béatrice et Bénédict, cunningly adapted from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. All the time these verbal warriors have spent attacking each other with their acute wits has been a cover-up for their terrors of very much the same helpless vulnerability Roméo exposes himself to. These people are so smart that they're scared almost to death to admit even to themselves how powerfully they're attracted to each other.

First, let's listen again to the wonderful Overture.

BERLIOZ: Béatrice et Bénédict: Overture

Orchestra of the Opéra de Lyon, John Nelson, cond. Erato, recorded March 1991

And here again is Béatrice, having overheard a staged conversation revealing that Bénédict loves her:

Béatrice et Bénédict: Act II, "Dieu! Que viens-je d'entendre? . . . Il m'en souvient" ("God! What have I just heard? . . . It all comes back to me")

BÉATRICE: God! What have I just heard? What have I just heard?
I feel a secret fire
spreading through my breast.
Bénédict! Can it be so?
Bénédict might love me?

It all comes back to me, it all comes back to me.
The day of the departure of the army.
I couldn't explain to myself
the strange feeling of alarmed sadness
that came to overtake my heart.
He's leaving, I said, he's leaving, I remain.
Is it glory, is it death
that fate reserves
for this mocker whom I hate?
With the blackest terrors
the following night was filled.
The Moors triumphed; I heard their shouts.
With floods of Christian blood the earth was reddened.
In my dream I saw Bénédict gasping,
expiring without help under a heap of bodies;
I tossed and turned on my feverish bed;
cries of fear escaped my mouth.
Finally awakening, I laughed at my agitation.
I laughed at Bénédict. I laughed at myself,
at my foolish concerns.
Alas! alas! that laughter was bathed in tears.

It all comes back to me, etc.

I love him then? I love him then?
Yes, Bénédict, I love you, I love you.
I no longer belong to myself. I'm no longer myself.
Be my conqueror,
tame my heart!
Come, come, already this savage heart
flies toward slavery.
Yes, Benedict, I love you, etc.

Farewell, my frivolous gaiety!
Farewell, my freedom!
Farewell, disdain; farewell, jests!
Farewell, biting mockery!
Béatrice in her turn
falls victim to love!

Susan Graham (ms), Béatrice; Orchestra of the Opéra de Lyon, John Nelson, cond. Erato, recorded March 1991


AND A FINAL BONUS FROM BÉATRICE --

Just because this is some of the most beautiful music I know, here is the Nocturne that ends Act I, as Héro and her father's fiancée Ursule contemplate her future with her soon-to-be husband amid the beauty of the night.

Béatrice et Bénédict: Act I, "Vous soupirez, madame?"
("You sigh, madame?") (Nocturne)

URSULE: You sigh, madame?

HÉRO: Happiness oppresses my soul.
I can't think about it without trembling, despite myself.
Claudio! Claudio! I'm going to be yours.

BOTH: Peaceful and serene night!
The moon, sweet queen,
which sails while smiling;
the insect in the fields,
in the flowering grasses,
humming in secret;
Philomena,
who blends
with the murmuring of the woods
the splendors of her voice;
the faithful swallow,
caressing under our roofs
her frightened brood;
into its marble cup
this fountain falling back,
foaming;
the shadow of that tall tree,
like a specter moving
with the wind;
infinite harmonies,
what secret attractions
and charms do you have
for loving hearts?

URSULE: What! you're crying, madame?

HÉRO: These tears comfort my soul.
You'll feel yours flowing in your turn,
the day when you crown your love.

BOTH: Let us breathe in in silence
these roses swayed by
the breath of the zephyr!
To its fresh caress
let us turn our brows!
It stops . . . it stops . . .
and dies in a sigh.

Sylvia McNair (s), Héro; Catherine Robbin (ms), Ursule; Orchestra of the Opéra de Lyon, John Nelson, cond. Erato, recorded March 1991

A NOTE ON OUR RECORDINGS

I have to warn at the outset that, in good part because I have a wildly different sense from most listeners of what constitute the "important" Berlioz recordings, I'm once again missing many of the recordings I would most like to have used.

In one case I actually do have a CD edition to use: the Ozawa-BSO Roméo. (Ozawa's Berlioz series for DG was so little appreciated that it was stopped not all that long after it was started.) For Part III, containing the avenging-angel-like harangue of Father Laurence (as noted above, promoted here from Shakespeare's friar) to the assembled Veronese following the deaths of the young lovers, the Ozawa-DG recording is indispensable, if only for bass-baritone José van Dam, the only singer I've heard really make sense of this music.

But for Part I in particular, the recording I would have liked to offer you is an even less appreciated one, the Orfeo one with Lamberto Gardelli conducting Austrian Radio forces. Gardelli, a conductor I usually think of as no more than a competent plodder, may not be much more here; it may just be that competent plodding gets us closer to the heart of this incredibly enigmatic music than the confident bulldozing of all those higher-profile conductors who haven't stopped to really understand what's going on here. In addition, Gardelli's mezzo soloist, Brigitte Fassbaender, pretty much wipes out the competition, with a voice of just the right weight (Julia Hamari does a very nice job with Ozawa, but for me this is music that only really comes to life with a weightier instrument; Pierre Monteux's soloist, Regina Resnik, is much closer to the mark, and in fact does some of the most satisfying singing we're hearing this week, and so is Charles Dutoit's Florence Quivar, whom we heard Friday night, though her French is shaky) and an understanding of this incendiary music that sweeps through it.

In the case of Béatrice, I actually do like the Lyon-Erato recording conducted by John Nelson, which captures more of the special qualities of the piece than most of the others and has a fairly decent cast. I was surprised to find, when I reviewed my CD holdings for the Overture, that I actually liked Nelson's performance best. Really, this is as it should be; his players have the advantage of being saturated in the spirit of the opera.

Again, though, Béatrice seems to me to call for a weightier voice than either Susan Graham's or Frederica von Stade's (in the recital recording we heard last night). I would rather have presented Josephine Veasey, the Béatrice of Colin Davis's first recording of the opera, by far the most satisfactory of his increasingly less satisfactory three, or Yvonne Minton, Daniel Barenboim's (DG).

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