Béatrice et Bénédict

• Béatrice et Bénédict is an opéra-comique in 2 acts, composed 1860-62.¹
• Berlioz wrote the libretto himself,² based on the subplot of witty frenemies-turned-lovers Beatrice and Benedick in Shakespeare’s play Much Ado about Nothing (1600)³
• This was Berlioz’s final work, first performed in 1862, seven years before his death. It was commissioned by a Baden-Baden casino manager named Bénazet for performance in the town’s State Theater during the summer tourist season.⁴
• Berlioz was deeply influenced by literature, especially Shakespeare (and Berlioz was himself a writer, of music criticism and memoirs). Along with Victor Hugo and many French writers of his time, Berlioz looked to Shakespeare’s work as a model for creating a French romanticism.⁵

“This sudden and unexpected revelation of Shakespeare overwhelmed me. The lightning-flash of his genius revealed the whole heaven of art to me, illuminating its remotest depths in a single flash. I recognised the meaning of real grandeur, real beauty, and the real dramatic truth.”

Berlioz, on his first experience of Shakespeare. From Berlioz’s Mémoires (1870)⁶

1. Hugh Macdonald, “Berlioz, (Louis-)Hector,” Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press, 2001), accessed July 25, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000051424.
2. D. Kern Holoman, “Béatrice et Bénédict,” Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press, 2002), accessed July 25, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-5000007982.
3. David Bevington, “Much Ado about Nothing,” Encyclopædia Brittanica (May 2, 2019), accessed July 25, 2019, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Much-Ado-About-Nothing-by-Shakespeare.
4. Hugh Macdonald, “Berlioz, (Louis-)Hector,” Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press, 2001), accessed July 25, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000051424.
5. Ibid.
6. Eleanor Holmes, Rachel Holmes and Ernest Newman, trans., Memoirs of Hector Berlioz from 1803 to 1865(New York: Dover, 1966), 66.