Berlioz in Paris
Église Saint-Roch
Built between 1653 and 1740 the church of Saint-Roch, one of the largest in Paris, has very special associations with Berlioz’s career: it was in this church that on 10 July 1825 was given the first performance of Berlioz’s first large scale work, his Messe solennelle. The performance created a stir and brought the young composer to the notice of the Paris public, before he was even formally registered as a student at the Conservatoire. The work had been composed in 1824 but a planned performance in December of that year did not come off, and Berlioz took the opportunity to revise the Mass before it eventually reached its first performance (Berlioz tells the story at length in his Memoirs, chapters 7 & 8). He subsequently destroyed the work, preserving only the Resurrexit which subsequently provided music for the Tuba Mirum of the Requiem (1837), the end of Act I of his opera Benvenuto Cellini (1838) and the Christe of the Te Deum (1849). Remarkably, a copy of the complete work was rediscovered in 1991 in a church in Antwerp, Belgium, and published in 1994. It revealed further unsuspected borrowings by Berlioz from this early work in later compositions.
All the photographs reproduced on this page were taken by Michel
Austin. © Monir Tayeb and Michel Austin.
All rights of reproduction reserved.
A 17th century antiques shop on the left-side wall of the church
The foundation date of this shop, 1638, precedes the
construction of the church, which was apparently built around it.
The interior of the church
© 2000-2010 Monir Tayeb and Michel Austin 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 Paris main page