Profile: Berlioz, Romantic Outsider
http://www.playbillarts.com/features/article/7978.html
Charles Dutoit and the Philadelphia Orchestra have been exploring the work of Hector Berlioz this spring, with performances of The Damnation of Faust through May 2 and his Requiem slated for June. Music journalist Peter G. Davis profiles the French composer.
Three composers of genius dominated mid-19th century Europe: Richard Wagner (1813–83) in Germany, Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) in Italy, and Hector Berlioz (1803–69) in France, each embodying the ideals of high musical Romanticism in very different ways. Although audiences back then may not have viewed this mighty triumvirate with quite the same sense of awe and historical inevitability that we do today, few doubted their importance. In 1850 the 37-year-old Verdi was already a prolific and internationally successful opera composer, while his exact contemporary, Wagner, was stirring up heated controversy with his early operas and revolutionary theories about the “music of the future.”
Read more…