Hector Berlioz’s love of the theatre and his sensitivity to poetry were widely known. Tristia (literally ‘sorrows’), Op. 18, for chorus and orchestra, although its title alludes to Ovid’s collection of elegies, in fact draws on literary works by other authors. At the same time, the composer conceived it as a series of musical pages from his diary. The collection opens with ‘Méditation religieuse’, setting a poem by Thomas Moore and bearing the date ‘Rome, 4 April 1831’, followed by ‘La mort d’Ophélie’ (‘London, 4 July 1848’) and ‘Marche funèbre pour la dernière scène d’Hamlet’ (‘Paris, 22 September 1848’). Anyone who has read the composer's Memoirs or consulted the substantial volumes of his correspondence will have no difficulty associating these dates with episodes from his life: his stay at the Villa Medici on a scholarship and the story of his obsessive fascination with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson, the celebrated interpreter of Shakespearean roles and the artist’s first wife. Although the passion eventually faded, in 1848 he still devoted these two “musical epitaphs” to it. The song cycle Les Nuits d’été, Op. 7, for voice and orchestra, a highly evocative musical setting of six poems by Théophile Gautier, a close friend of Berlioz, was reportedly written with his second wife, the singer Maria Recio, already in mind.
Le Carnaval romain, ouverture caractéristique, Op. 9, which opens the second half of the concert, may be regarded as a remnant of Berlioz's opera Benvenuto Cellini (1838), rejected by Parisian audiences, from whose selected motifs the symphonic narrative of this work is built. As its title suggests, the music depicts the exuberant Carnival celebrations of the inhabitants of the Eternal City. Francis Poulenc’s music for the ballet Les Biches (1924) was composed at the request of Sergei Diaghilev, the founder and impresario of the Ballets Russes. The ballet depicts a drawing-room gathering of a group of aristocratic young people, filled with games that are not always innocent.
Grzegorz Zieziula
