"Cellini" at the MET.(Music)

"Malvenuto Cellini"? How astonishing that the public dismissed Berlioz's early opera Benvenuto Cellini with that contemptuous epithet. Luscious arias for the female roles, astonishing rhythmic innovations, a dramatic score that transcends a libretto that itself was the only reason the opera was ever written--Benvenuto Cellini has it all. How could Berlioz's contemporaries not respond to this delightful work? In fact, the sorry reception of Benvenuto Cellini established a pattern that echoed throughout the unhappy career of this man who--as he wrote in his bitterly funny Memoires--"had the imprudence to be born in a not very musical nation at a not very musical time."

Berlioz recounts the origins of Benvenuto Cellini in his splendid Memoires. He was thirty-one and earning his living as a musical journalist when he came across the autobiographical Vita of the great Renaissance sculptor and goldsmith. "I had the misfortune," Berlioz noted dryly, "to believe that [it] would make an interesting and dramatic subject for an opera." Not surprising: Cellini's themes of artistic struggle, the battle against corruption, and the consequences of passion were themes that resonated powerfully in Berlioz's life. Berlioz asked his friends Auguste Barbier and Leon de Wailly to prepare a libretto for the Opera Comique. They did. It was promptly rejected. The Paris Opera later accepted an altered version. Nevertheless, things were not promising. The administrator of the Opera, Charles-Edmond Duponchel, whom Heinrich Heine once described as "a yellow little man who looked like an undertaker" viewed Berlioz's music as "a conglomeration of absurdities beyond human redemption." Berlioz scored the work over the next eighteen months with financial support from his friend Ernest Legouve.

Benvenuto was rehearsed in mid-1838 ("I shall never forget the horror of those three months") and was premiered on September 10. Despite the brevity of his time as critic for the Journal des Debats, Berlioz had managed to cultivate a number of influential enemies. The premiere, Berlioz wrote, "was hissed with exemplary precision and energy." The lead, fearing for his reputation, feigned illness after three performances. He had no understudy. The conductor could (or would) not master the complex score. The administrator, Duponchel, offered no support. Add to these problems the poisonous political atmosphere of the Paris Opera, which looked askance at all works not in the approved Rossini-Meyerbeer-Scribe format, and it is something of a miracle that Benvenuto Cellini was ever performed at all. "Theatres are to music as brothels are to love," Berlioz would later write, "with machinists, wardrobe-mistresses and under-candlesnuffers" all having more power over the work than the composer.

Benvenuto is set against a background of rivalry in art and love. Pope Clement VII has chosen Cellini over his rival Fieramosca to create a statue of Perseus. The Pope's treasurer, Balducci, attempts to re-open negotiations after Cellini has started work. Cellini, however, has also bested Fieramosca in the rivalry for the affections of Balducci's daughter, Teresa. In the first act, Teresa and Cellini agree on Shrove Monday to elope but are overheard by the eavesdropping Fieramosca. The following day, Balducci pays Cellini's assistant, Ascanio, for the statue, but only a fraction of what was due. Later, at the Mardi Gras carnival, ...