Florence
Berlioz had fond memories of Florence. As he writes to a friend on his last passage through the city in May 1832 (Correspondance générale no. 270, hereafter CG for short):
I was moved to see Florence again. It is a city which I love. Everything about it gives me pleasure – its name, its sky, its river, its timber beams, its palaces, its air, the grace and elegance of its inhabitants, its surroundings, everything, I love it, I love it...
Berlioz stayed in the city four times on his way to and from Rome: first around 1-5 March 1831, then the following month from 1-15 April when lack of news from his fiancée Camille Moke prompted him to return to France, then more briefly on 26-28 May after his return from Nice, finally on 12-14 May 1832 after leaving Rome for his journey back to France. The chronology of events is clearly established by Berlioz’s own letters at the time, while the later account in the Memoirs telescopes the perspective; in particular the Memoirs attribute to the third (and brief) stay of May 1831 events and experiences which belong in fact to the first two, especially the second.
The account in the Memoirs (chapter 35) reads as follows:
Among all Italy’s capital cities, none left in me such pleasant memories as Florence. Far from feeling consumed with spleen, as I was later in Rome and in Naples, a complete stranger who did not know anybody, with very limited available cash, and despite the huge drain on my finances caused by the escapade to Nice, I enjoyed as a result the most complete freedom and spent there some very pleasant days. I would either visit the city’s numerous monuments, dreaming of Dante and Michelangelo, or I would read Shakespeare in the delightful woods along the west bank of the Arno, where the deep tranquillity made it possible for me to voice my admiration aloud. Well aware that in the capital of Tuscany I would not find what I could at best hope for in Naples and Milan, I put music out of my thoughts, until conversations at table informed me that Bellini’s new opera (I Montecchi ed i Capuletti) was about to be performed. There was much praise for the music, but also for the libretto, which surprised me greatly in view of the Italians’ general indifference for the words in an opera. Ha, ha, this is something new!! After so many miserable operatic attempts at this fine drama, I am now going to hear a real opera about Romeo, worthy of Shakespeare’s genius! What a subject! How everything is designed for music!...
But Berlioz was very disappointed with the opera:
What a disappointment!! In the libretto there is no ball at the Capulets, no Mercutio, no chattering nurse, no solemn and composed hermit, no balcony scene, no sublime monologue of Juliet when she receives the hermit’s flask, no duet in the cell between the banished Romeo and the distraught hermit; no Shakespeare, nothing; a failed work.
Years later, in 1839, Berlioz gave a demonstration of what could be done with the subject in his choral symphony Romeo and Juliet. In 1859 he reviewed in detail Bellini’s opera when it was staged for the first time at the Paris Opéra; the review was later included by Berlioz in À travers chants.
A few days after the performance of the work by Bellini, still according to the Memoirs (chapter 35), Berlioz went to see Pacini’s La Vestale:
Although what I already knew of it had convinced me that all it had in common with Spontini’s work was the title, I was not expecting anything of the sort... Once more Licinius was played by a woman... After a few moments of painful concentration, I must have exclaimed, like Hamlet [Act III, Scene II]: "Wormwood, wormwood" and feeling incapable of swallowing any more of this I left in the middle of the second act, giving a furious kick at the floor, which hurt my big toe so badly that I felt sore for the next three days. – Poor Italy!... But at least, I will be told, in churches the musical pageantry must be worthy of the ceremonies it accompanies. Poor Italy!... That is what I heard with my own ears during my stay in Florence.
A letter to his father from Florence dated 2 March (CG no. 211) shows that it was during his first passage in the city that Berlioz heard Bellini’s opera; the same may be true of the opera by Pacini. During this stay Berlioz will also hardly have failed to notice Benvenuto Cellini’s statue of Perseus in the Piazza della Signoria, with its famous inscription: "If any man offends you, I myself will be your avenger" (Si quis te laeserit, ego tuus ultor ero) – years later, in 1838, the Florentine sculptor became the hero of Berlioz’s opera which bears his name.
Hardly had Berlioz moved on to Rome later in March that, driven to distraction by Camille Moke’s silence, he decided on impulse to return to Paris; he stopped on the way in Florence waiting for news from Camille. The account in the Memoirs (chapter 34) starts as follows:
While going through Florence I fell violently ill and was confined to bed for a week. [...] During this week of suffering, I busied myself with re-orchestrating the Ball (2nd movement) of my Fantastic Symphony, and I added to it the present Coda. This was still incomplete when on the first day I was able to go out I went to the post office to ask for my mail. I was presented with a bundle which contained a letter of such extraordinary impudence and so hurtful to a young man as highly strung as I was then that something dreadful suddenly happened inside me. Two tears of rage darted from my eyes, and my decision was instantly taken. I must rush back to Paris and kill there without mercy two guilty women and one innocent man. As for taking my own life after this exploit, this was, as you can imagine, part of the ritual.
The chronology is again misleading. From a long letter Berlioz wrote from Nice to his friends in Paris and dated 6 May 1831 (CG no. 223), it appears that the stay in Florence in April was actually longer. In the letter he tells how after recovering from his illness "he spent days on the banks of the Arno, in a delightful wood a few miles from Florence, reading Shakespeare. That is where I read King Lear for the first time and screamed with admiration for this work of genius." He also relates, with macabre fascination, two funerals – one of a young woman, the other of a young relative of Napoleon. It was only two days after these events that he received news of Camille Moke’s engagement to Pleyel and conceived the plan to return to Paris to exact a bloody retribution.
From Florence he went to Genoa, and on to Nice, but on the way changed his mind and decided to stay put. After spending a month in Nice he came back to Florence on his way to Rome (via Genoa again). Contrary to the account in the Memoirs (chapter 35), this third stay was in fact brief and uneventful, as is implied in a letter of Berlioz to his sister Adèle shortly after his return to Rome in early June (CG no. 230).
Florence in 1833
This steel engraving by E. Finden is in our own collection.
Panoramic view of Florence ca. 1898
Florence and the River Arno
A view of the River Arno
Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus displayed in the Loggia
dei Lanzi ca
1898
Statue of Benvenuto Cellini holding
a miniature copy of his Perseus
A portrait of Cellini in his old age
The above six photos have been scanned from John L. Stoddards Lectures, Volume V – Paris La Belle France and Spain, by John L. Stoddard (Balch Brothers, 1898), in our own collection.
© 2003-2006 (unless otherwise stated) Michel Austin and Monir Tayeb for all the photos, engravings and information on this page
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