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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 Mémoires—“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 Mémoires. He was thirty-one and earning his living as a musical journalist when he cam ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 22 February 2004, on page 59 Copyright © 2009 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/cellini-penrose-1592
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A review of The Triumph of Music: The Rise of Composers, Musicians and Their Art by Tim Blanning. On Ludwig Alois Friedrich von Köchel, compiler of the Köchelverzeichnis. On the Europeanization of the Metropolitan Opera, Alan Gilbert's New York Philharmonic, Paul Jacobs at Juiliard, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.  The New Criterion is now optimized for Mobile Devices 
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