The Hector Berlioz Website

Berlioz Photo Album : Friends and acquaintances (5)

Alexandrine-Caroline Branchu (1780-1850)

Madame Branchu was the leading soprano at the Paris Opéra for most of the first quarter of the 19th century. Berlioz met her quite often in his student days and her superb declamation in Gluck’s operas made a profound impression on him. Berlioz wrote extensively in his A Travers Chants about Madame Branchu and her art. She may well have been in Berlioz’s mind when in the late 1850s he wrote the roles of Cassandre and Didon, the major female parts of his epic opera Les Troyens.

Adelina Patti (1843-1919)

Adelina Patti was a prodigious soprano whom Berlioz knew very well. Her parents were of Italian origin and her two sisters were also opera singers. 

Horace Vernet (1758-1836)

Vernet was the director of the French Academy in the Villa Medici in Rome at the time Berlioz was in Italy as a Prix de Rome Laureate. 
The picture is courtesy of H Berlioz, épisodes de la vie d’un artiste (Grenoble, Glénat / Musée Hector Berlioz, 2003), edited by Madame Chantal Spillemaecker, conservateur du musée Hector-Berlioz; we are most grateful to her.

Horace Vernet 

A copy of this cartoon by Vernet himself is in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. 

Mademoiselle Louise Vernet (1814-1845)

Mademoiselle Vernet was Horace Vernet’s daughter; Berlioz dedicated to her La Captive, which he composed in Subiaco in Italy.

 Louis-Antoine Jullien (1812-1860)
(known as Jullien)

He was the director of the Drury Lane Theatre, London and engaged Berlioz to conduct concerts and the orchestra of the Grand English Opera at the theatre in 1847-48. This was the first of Berlioz’s five visits to London. The lithograph dates from 1843.

For further information on Jullien, see M. Michel Faul’s site, http://louisjullien.site.voila.fr, and read his book Louis Jullien : musique, spectacle et folie au XIXe siècle (Éditions Atlantica, 2006).
 

Adolphe Sax (1814-1894)

Berlioz was an ardent supporter of Sax’s new wind instruments and his improvements to existing wind families. He was the first to write for the saxophone (Le Chant Sacré, 1844 arrangement). The soprano saxhorn has prominent parts in the Te Deum and Les Troyens.

© 1997-2010 (unless otherwise stated) Monir Tayeb and Michel Austin for all the texts and images on Berlioz Photo Album pages.
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