Nice
Contents of this page:
Introduction
The first visit: April-May
1831
The second visit: September
1844
The third visit: March
1868
Nice in pictures
This page is also available in French
Nice held a very special place in Berlioz’s affections because of the special circumstances which attended his first stay there in April-May 1831. He had arrived in Rome in March but the lack of news from his fiancée Camille Moke in Paris drove him to distraction and induced him to leave Rome on 1 April to return to Florence. After waiting two weeks there he received a letter from Camille Moke’s mother informing him that the engagement was broken and that her daughter was now going to marry the rich piano-manufacturer Camille Pleyel. Berlioz decided there and then to return to Paris to exact revenge by murdering all three culprits… On his way there he passed through Genoa where he attempted to commit suicide, but wiser counsels prevailed; he stopped instead in Nice where he spent a month from ca. 19-20 April to 21 May. He later gave a light-hearted account of the episode in his Voyage en Italie in 1844, which was substantially reproduced in his posthumous Memoirs (chapter 34), though there is no doubt that at the time the insult had hurt him deeply. In the event the stay in Nice was a turning point in his life; he was able to start his recovery, and he later remembered this period as the happiest three weeks in his life. Nice became forever associated in his mind with happy memories, which he frequently recalls in his later writings. He returned there twice, the first time in September 1844 where he stayed for several weeks, and the second time near the end of his life, in March 1868, when the visit this time had tragic consequences from which he never fully recovered.
The first visit, April-May 1831
It was almost by chance that Berlioz stopped in Nice: his first thought had been to return to France via Turin, but the Italian police refused him a passport and told him to go via Nice instead (Nice at the time was part of Italy, and only reverted to France in 1860). This was a stroke of good fortune: he was immediately seduced by the town, its location and surroundings, and besides the proximity of France meant that he could be in close correspondence with his family at La Côte-Saint-André. Shortly after his arrival he wrote to them at length (CG no. 219, 21 April):
[…] I have rented a lovely room with an old lady; I am on a small fortified mountain, my windows open out on the sea; my fellow-lodgers in the house are two young men from Arles, to whom my good lady introduced me this morning.
Here is the address: H.B c/o Widow Pical, Clerici house, consulate of Naples, at the Ponchettes, Nice-Maritime. […]
Nice is a really fresh and pink-coloured city, the sea, the mountains, everything is green. I am so near you that the trip to Lyon costs only 62 francs, and everybody speaks French. […]
It was from his stay in Nice that Berlioz’s love for the sea dates. A long letter addressed to a group of friends in Paris gives a detailed account of his arrival in Italy and subsequent events up to his stay in Nice (CG no. 223, 6 May, from Nice):
[…] I have a delightful room with windows overlooking the sea. I have got used to the continuous moan of the waves. When I open my window in the morning, it is wonderful to watch the crests approaching like the undulating mane of a squadron of white horses. I go to sleep to the sound of the breaking waves which crash against the rock on which my house is built.
The location of Nice makes it a really delightful little town; the sea and mountains are fresh and pink-coloured. Occasionally, and at the risk of breaking my limbs, I go for excursions among the rocks. The other day I discovered the ruins of a tower built on the edge of the precipice; there is a small open space in front of it, where I lie down in the sun and look out at sea watching ships arriving from afar, I count the fishermen’s boats and marvel at that golden path of rays which, according to Thomas Moore, must lead to some bright isle of rest!* Actually it is in real life the subject of the lithograph of our melodies; yes, Gounet, it is exactly that. […]* Note: this is a quotation from Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies, from the poem entitled How dear to me the hour (London, 2nd ed. 1822, p. 27). The full poem reads:
How dear to me the hour when day-light dies,
And sunbeams melt along the silent sea,
For then sweet dreams of other days arise,
And memory breathes her vesper sigh to thee.And, as I watch the line of light, that plays
Along the smooth wave tow’rd the burning west,
I long to tread that golden path of rays,
And think ’twould lead to some bright isle of rest!
But Berlioz did far more than just contemplate the sea and go for walks: the circumstances of the stay in Nice stimulated a burst of composing activity. On arriving there he hinted at his intentions (CG no. 219, 21 April, to his family):
[…] I am going to undertake an immense work; I must not waste my time and get lost in dreams; what I fear above all is letting tender feelings and memories of happiness flood back. By showing to myself a way forward I will forget the past. […]
My young and sublime orchestra, so we will meet again!… We have great things to do together. There is a musical America there, Beethoven was its Columbus, I shall be Pizarro or Cortez. […]
Very quickly he settled down to a concrete project. While waiting in Florence for news from Camille Moke he had read for the first time Shakespeare’s King Lear: within a few days of arriving in Nice he started an overture on the subject which was completed within less than three weeks (CG nos. 222, 223, 225), after which he started a second overture (Rob Roy) which was completed a few weeks later, and also a new work of an autobiographical character (the Mélologue, later called Lélio) which combined spoken narrative with separate pieces of music (CG nos. 228, 231). His stay in Nice was prolonged for longer than he had initially anticipated; eventually he departed for Rome on 21st May via Genoa and Florence, and on the return journey continued to work on the Mélologue which was eventually completed in Rome (CG no. 230).
The second visit, September 1844
Berlioz never forgot the happy times he had spent in Nice in idyllic circumstances. Subsequently in periods of stress his thoughts would often turn back to those moments. In a letter to General Lvov in St Petersburg in January 1848 he writes ‘You are asking me where I intend to spend the summer; I do not know. I may possibly go to visit Nice again, as I always do when I have had a tough winter’ (CG no. 1170). By this time Berlioz had already made a return visit to Nice, in September 1844: during the summer he had organised and conducted (1 August) a vast concert on the occasion of the Festival of Industry, and was advised by his friend Amussat the doctor to go and spend time there to recover from the stress this had induced. Unlike the first stay in 1831 no letters survive from this visit in September 1844, but from the account in the Memoirs (chapter 53, previously published in Le Monde Illustré on 13 February 1858), it was comparable to the earlier visit:
It was with deep emotion that I revisited the places where I had been thirteen years earlier, during another and different convalescence, at the start of my stay in Italy… I swam a great deal in the sea and made many excursions to the vicinity of Nice, Villefranche, Beaulieu, Cimiez, and the Lighthouse. I resumed my exploration of the rocks along the coast where I found, still slumbering in the sun, familiar old cannons. I saw again fresh and inviting bays, clad with sea-weeds, where I used to bathe. The room where in 1831 I had written the overture to King Lear was occupied by an English family, so I set up my quarters in a tower leaning against the rock of the Ponchettes, above the house.
I thoroughly enjoyed the wonderful view over the Mediterranean and the tranquillity which seemed to me more priceless than ever. Then, after eventually recovering from my jaundice and using up my 800 francs, I left this delightful coast of Sardinia which has always had such a strong attrhttp://www.hberlioz.com/Russia/stpetersburg.htm#cg3319action for me, and I returned to Paris to resume my thankless labours.
Berlioz does not mention here that, as in the previous visit, he composed another overture: it was originally called, appropriately, La Tour de Nice [The Tower of Nice] and first performed at a concert the following year; the work was subsequently revised between 1846 and 1851 and renamed Le Corsaire. The tower in Nice (the Tour des Ponchettes) had special personal associations for Berlioz: when in 1860 Nice was eventually attached again to France he greeted the event in one of his feuilletons in the Journal des Débats (26 June): ‘Ah! my dear Tour des Ponchettes, where I spent so many sweet hours, from the top of which I sent so often my morning greetings to the slumbering sea before the sun would rise, you are trembling with joy on your rocky foundations, you feel happy to be a French tower!’
Over the years, Berlioz continues to mention Nice from time to time in his correspondence, always with fond memories and the expressed wish of being able to return there. To his sister Adèle in 1857 (CG no. 2254, 12 October):
[…] I am very sorry to hear what you are telling me about my uncle’s health; I cannot believe that the climate of Nice does not agree with him; how is that possible? It is the most gentle and pure air that you can breathe. Ah! how I wish I could go there. […]
To his son Louis in 1864 (CG no. 2839, 1 March; cf. no. 2945):
[…] I was feeling much better since I had taken the decision not to write any more feuilletons. By cutting down on expenses I can manage without the income they brought in. But I would need to go to Nice to cure my throat ailment which is getting worse, and I cannot. […]
To his uncle Marmion in 1867 (CG no. 3227, 12 March):
Your letter caused me a great deal of pleasure; I shared in the joy you are experiencing of living quietly by the sea in this adorable city of Nice; if I was able to I would gladly come and keep you company. I have already been there twice; I stayed in the district of the Ponchettes. On the first occasion I was living at the Clerici house, and on the second in the tower which is above and against the rock. That is where I wrote (though did not compose – I would always compose by the sea), my overture to King Lear, some thirty five years ago now. Alas! Alas! it is still a youthful work but its author is rather old. […]
During his last concert tour abroad, in winter 1867-1868 in Russia, one thought which kept surfacing in his letters was his wish to escape from the rigours of the Russian winter and enjoy once more the balmy sunshine of Nice (CG nos. 3319, 3327, 3330, 3334). Back in Paris after his trip he wrote to Vladimir Stasov (CG no. 3346, 1 March 1868):
I have not written to you since I have been back, I was suffering so dreadfully. Today I am a little better; I send you my greetings with the news that I am leaving for Monaco. I will depart this evening at 7 o’clock. I do not know why I am not dying. This being so, I will go and see again by beloved coastline of Nice, the rocks of Villefranche and the sunshine in Monaco. […]
But this time everything went terribly wrong. The first letter to tell of his two successive falls, in Monaco around 6 March and the next day in Nice where he suffered a stroke, is addressed to Alfred Dörffel after his return to Paris (CG no. 3347, 19 March):
As we had agreed, I wrote to you a few days after returning from St Petersburg. Since then I have been to Monaco and Nice where I experienced nothing but disappointments and accidents. I first fell in the rocks at Monaco, where I damaged my face; it is a miracle that I did not kill myself. Then another fall in Nice where I stayed eight days in bed.
Since my return here I stay in bed all the time, and besides I have no wish of showing myself, as my looks are not presentable. But my features are beginning to recover their shape. […]
The first full account was given by Berlioz to Estelle Fornier several days later (CG no. 3348, 25 March):
I am writing to you instead of paying you a visit. I am in bed in Paris. I stayed eight days in bed in Nice. It is very odd, the trip I made was absurd. My niece knows nothing about this, neither does my brother-in-law, in Grenoble they know nothing either, but I cannot let you remain ignorant of my accident any longer.
So let me tell you that I was feeling bored in Monaco for two days when one morning I wanted to get to the sea down some dangerously steep rocks. After three steps my rashness was obvious, I was unable to keep my foothold and fell headlong on my face. I stayed on the ground alone for a long time, unable to get up and streaming with blood. Finally, after quarter of an hour, I managed to drag myself to the villa where I was washed and bandaged willy-nilly.
I had reserved a seat in the omnibus to return to Nice and went back there the next day, but listen to this. Having reached Nice, though all disfigured, I wanted to see the terrace overlooking the sea which I used to be so fond of, and went up there. I sat on a bench, but as I could not get a good view of the sea, I stood up to change place, and hardly had I walked three steps that I fell straight, again on my face, and shed more blood than the day before. Two young men who were walking around on the terrace came in alarm to pick me up and took me by the arms to the Hôtel des Étrangers, not far from where I had fallen. I stayed in bed motionless for eight days, and when I had enough strength I came back to Paris without worrying about how I looked in the railway. My mother-in-law and my servant screamed when they saw me come in. Since then I have not left my bed, and for two weeks I have been in agony without getting better. My nose and eyes are in a sorry state; the doctor, to console me, said I was lucky to have shed so much blood, otherwise I would have expired there and then, particularly on the second day. […]
A number of letters over the next few weeks give similar accounts of the two incidents, sometimes with additional details (CG nos. 3349, 3350, 3354, 3356, 3360); the event was even mentioned in the Paris press (cf. CG no. 3363). Berlioz never fully recovered from the combined effects of the fall and the stroke, and he died just over a year after they had happened.
Unless otherwise specified, all the pictures reproduced on this page have been scanned from engravings, postcards and books in our own collection. © Monir Tayeb and Michel Austin. All rights of reproduction reserved.
Nice in 1864
Nice in the 19th century
This engraving is scanned from Promenade des Anglais, Nice
1833-1933.
The Ponchettes in 1845
The above engraving is scanned from Promenade des Anglais, Nice
1833-1933. The road which leads to the Tower of Ponchettes (see below) is now in the old town of Nice, lined with beautiful old flat-roofed
houses and art galleries.
The Ponchettes
La Tour des Ponchettes c. 1835
The above lithograph is by Paul-Emile Barbéri (c. 1835) and is in the Musée Masséna, Nice, France. In his Les Soirées de l’Orchestre, Berlioz refers to this tower as the Tower of the Ponchettes (Tour des Ponchettes), but it is locally known as the Bellanda Tower. The road which leads to the tower and the rock against which it leans still bear the name of Les Ponchettes.
The original Bellanda Tower was pulled down by King Louis in 1844. When Nice became French in 1860 a new one was built, which is now the home of the naval museum.
Bellanda Tower, built in 1860
This photo of Bellanda Tower is scanned from Promenade
des Anglais, Nice 1833-1933, a copy of which is in our own collection.
Plaque on Bellanda Tower commemorating Berlioz’s stay in Nice in 1831 and 1844
The text on the upper
section of the plaque is quoted from Berlioz’s Memoirs: ‘The room where in
1831 I had written the overture to King Lear was occupied by an English
family, so I set up my quarters in
a tower leaning against the rock of the Ponchettes, above
the house’ (see also above). The lower section reads:
‘This
plaque was installed thanks to the Association of Students of the
Nice Conservatoire on 6 November 1932’.
We are most grateful to Mr Ian Woolf for sending us the above
photo, taken by himself.
Berlioz’s bust in the Jardin Albert Premier in Nice
The above bust is by the French sculptor Henri Blattès and
dates from 1948. We are most grateful to Mr Ian Woolf for sending us the above photo, taken by
himself.
Berlioz’s bust by Alfred Charles Lenoir
This bust, in patinated plaster, was made by Alfred Charles
Lenoir in 1919; he had made its model
between 1903 and 1904. He was commissioned to make the actual bust in 1904. The
bust is located in the Musée Masséna in Nice, France.
We are most grateful to Mr. Ian Woolf for sending us a copy of the photograph of
the bust taken by himself.
The Berlioz in Italy pages were created on 7 December 2003; this page was enlarged on 15 April 2012.
© 2003-2012 (unless otherwise stated) Michel Austin and Monir Tayeb for all the pictures and information on this page.
Copyright notice: The texts, photos, images and musical scores on all pages of this site are covered by UK Law and International Law. All rights of publication or reproduction of this material in any form, including Web page use, are reserved. Their use without our explicit permission is illegal.
Back to Berlioz in Italy main page
Back to Berlioz and France main page
Introduction