MOSCOW
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Berlioz visited Moscow twice, in April 1847 and January 1868. On both occasions he had been invited to give concerts in Saint-Petersburg, but while there he was persuaded to go to Moscow as well. The two visits of 1847 and 1868 differed in various respects, and we have accordingly organised this page into two sections:
Note: the dates below are all given according to the Gregorian calendar, which was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar still in use in Russia; for the equivalent Julian dates see the chronology.
Berlioz was enthusiastically received in St Petersburg; the visit to Moscow was not so straightforward. He only gave one concert there, in the Hall of the Nobility, around 10 April. He describes in chapter 55 of his Memoirs, in his inimitable style, the difficulties he encountered before he was able to give his concert in the Hall, the only venue suitable for the purpose:
The Hall of the Nobility was the only suitable one for my concert. To get permission to use the hall I asked to be introduced to the Grand Marshal of the Palace, a venerable old man eighty years old, and I explained to him the purpose of my visit.
« — What instrument do you play? was his first question.
— I do not play any instrument.
— Well then how do you manage to give a concert?
— I perform my works and conduct the orchestra.
— Ha! ha! how very odd! I have never heard of such concerts. I am quite willing to allow you to use our great hall; but as you probably know, every artist we allow to use it must in return perform and be heard after the concert at one of the private gatherings of the nobility.
— Does this mean that the assembly has an orchestra that will be placed at my disposal to perform my music?
— Not at all.
— Then how can I get it played? Presumably I am not being asked to spend 3,000 francs to pay the musicians needed to perform one of my symphonies in the private concert of the assembly? That would make for a very expensive rental fee.
— Then, Sir, I regret I have to refuse your request; I have no other choice. »
After prolonged negotiations with the marshal and his wife and the sympathetic intervention of a senior officer, who advised him to put his request the following day in writing, the obstacle was overcome and Berlioz was able to give his concert in the hall.
I followed this advice, and thanks to the helpful colonel, they waived the rules but only for this occasion; my concert could take place, and I was not forced to play either the flute or the drum at the gathering of the nobility. They had a lucky escape, because rather than crossing the Volga without giving my concert, I was determined to play absolutely anything, even a mediaeval flute [Berlioz uses the word galoubet, a flute with three holes and held with one hand; the instrument is still in use]. All the same, the peculiar regulations of the Muscovite nobility’s club, which unfortunately I had not heard about in St Petersburg, caused me to lose a substantial amount of money (Memoirs, chapter 55).
He was not impressed by the performers, especially the chorus who sang in his concert. In his letters of the time he mostly writes about the concerts he had given or would be giving in St Petersburg and the success he had there. In a letter dated 8 April to Pierre-Jules Hetzel, for instance, he writes (Correspondance générale no. 1103, hereafter CG for short):
I am leaving later today for St Petersburg where they are waiting for me to perform Roméo et Juliette at the Imperial Theatre. These good Muscovites have been turned upside down the day before yesterday by the first two parts of Faust which I managed to put on with the greatest difficulty. Here they do not have a fraction of the resources available in St Petersburg.
They have been clamouring for a 2nd concert, I have just received a letter asking for more, but I suffered too much in putting on the first, and in spite of all their displays of enthusiasm and the few thousand roubles I could still earn in Moscow, I prefer to go back to some decent music-making in St Petersburg.
Only the orchestra went reasonably well, but the chorus! Shame!!
One evening in April Berlioz saw a performance of Glinka’s first opera at the Bolshoi Theatre (Memoirs, chapter 55):
I heard in Moscow a performance of Glinka’s first opera, A Life for the Tsar.
The huge theatre was empty (but is it ever full?... I doubt it). The scene showed almost all the time snow-clad forests of pine, steppes covered with snow, men white with snow. I still shiver to think about it. There are some very graceful and original melodies in this work, but I almost had to guess them, so imperfect was the performance. In fact, it seems that they have a very strange way of rehearsing in this theatre, despite the enthusiasm and musical ability of the director, M. Verstovsky. I discovered this when we came round to rehearsing the choruses in the first two acts of Faust which were included in the programme. (Berlioz goes on to describe how the chorus were used to rehearsing without any accompaniment...)
Berlioz stayed in Moscow altogether three weeks and left for Saint-Petersburg on 8 April. The next time he was in Moscow was over 20 years later.
The Bolshoi Theatre
The first Bolshoi Theatre was Prince P.V. Urussov’s Public Opera and Ballet Theatre, commissioned by Catherine the Great in 1776. It was inaugurated in 1780. It was destroyed in 1805 by the first of many fires which blighted the theatre throughout its history. The building that Berlioz knew in his first visit to Moscow was built in 1824 by Bauvais and Mikhailovand, and opened its doors to the public on 6th January 1825. This was burnt in 1853 when the interior was almost entirely destroyed, but the outer walls remained more or less intact. It was reconstructed in 1856 by the architect Albert Kavos, the designer of St Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre, where Berlioz saw A Life for the Tsar for the second time in February1868.
A panoramic view of the Kremlin
Berlioz saw little of Moscow, not even the Kremlin, which he saw only from the outside, partly because he was busy preparing for his concert, and partly because of the weather (Memoirs, chapter 55):
Moscow, a half-Asiatic city, has much to offer in the way of interesting architectural curiosities; but I studied it little during the three weeks I spent there. I was completely immersed in the preparations for my concert. Because of the thaw which was in full swing and the mild weather, the city was in any case difficult to visit. The streets were nothing but puddles of water and slush, out of which even the sledges had trouble extricating themselves. Even the Kremlin I only saw from the outside. All I did was to count the beads on the necklaces of the guns which surround it... sad relics picked up on the tracks of our dying army... There are guns of every kind, every calibre, and every country. Inscriptions in French (what a cruel irony!) even identify the regiments or the allies of France who owned the pieces from this grim collection. One of these artillery pieces received a strange wound: it has on the lip the trace of a Russian cannon ball, which struck it on the rim, entered the barrel and ploughed up the inside. Supposing the piece was loaded at the time of the accident, I leave you to imagine the shock of the cartridge inside on receiving such a hefty blow – the proud cannon must have imagined that the emperor Napoleon had resumed his former role as gunner and was loading the gun in person.
The cannons left behind by the retreating French army
The cannons left behind by the retreating French army
The cannons, which at the time of Berlioz’s visit were around the Kremlin, were relocated to the "Poklannaya Mountain" memorial in Moscow, dedicated to the victory in the Great Patriotic War.
Note the letter N [for Napoleon] on the cannons on the second picture.
On his second visit to Moscow Berlioz stayed there for two weeks (1-13 January 1868) and gave two concerts. The first one took place at the Manège on 8 January and he took up the baton at 1.00pm to conduct his overture Le Carnaval romain, a chorus from Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus, the Offertoire from the Grande Messe des morts, Mozart’s Ave verum, the Fête chez Capulet from Roméo et Juliette, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and the "Slavsya! Slavsya!" chorus from Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar. The second took place in the Hall of the Nobility on 11 January (for the programme see the letter to Damcke cited below).
Unlike 1847, this time Berlioz was very pleased with the musicians who played in his concerts, as well as the audience’s response to his music: the standard of music-making had improved considerably since then. « What a difference between Moscow today and the musical resources it had twenty years ago! » exclaims Berlioz in a letter to his niece Nanci Suat (CG no. 3327). A letter of 10 January to Berthold Damcke, whom he had met in Russia in 1847 and was now living in Paris, gives a glimpse of his musical experiences in Moscow (CG no. 3326):
My dear Damcke
I have felt so tired these last few days that I have not had the courage to write to you; and yet I have had a great musical experience. The directors of the Conservatoire in Moscow came to fetch me in St Petersburg and secured from the Grand Duchess a leave of absence of 12 days for me. I accepted the invitation to conduct two concerts. As they could not find a hall large enough for the first concert they had the idea of giving it in the Manège Hall, a hall as large as the central hall in our Palais de l’Industrie at the Champs-Elysées. I thought the idea crazy, but it was incredibly successful. There were 500 performers, and according to the police estimate an audience of 12,600. I will not try to describe to you their applause for the Fête from Roméo et Juliette and for the Offertorium from the Requiem. But I was desperately worried at the start of this piece, which had been played in St Petersburg. Hearing this chorus of 300 voices constantly repeating the two same notes, I instantly imagined the crowd would quickly get bored, and feared they would not let me finish. But the crowd understood my idea. Their attention increased and they were gripped by this expression of resigned humility. At the last bar a huge acclamation burst out on every side; I was recalled four times, the orchestra and chorus then joined in, and I did not know where to hide. Never in my life have I made such a great impression. A message was immediately sent to the Grand Duchess to inform her of this outbreak of popular emotion.
The Conservatoire is giving a second concert tomorrow evening Saturday [11 January] with its own orchestra of only 70 musicians. They have again included the Offertorium in the programme. Laub is playing the solo viola part in my Harold symphony and we are starting with the overture to King Lear. Laub is then playing the Beethoven violin concerto. We had a final rehearsal this morning and it is going wonderfully.
The day after tomorrow there is a reception in my honour in the Hall of the Nobility, where every artist in Moscow is invited. After that I shall be leaving for St Petersburg where I still have two concerts to give. I am completely exhausted, but also happy at this beautiful outcome. [...]
Berlioz left for St
Petersburg
on 13 January to give his fifth and six concerts there before departing for
Paris a month later.
Berlioz gave the first of his two Moscow concerts in 1868 in this building, on 8 January. The second, on 11 January, was in the Hall of the Nobility.
Inaugurated on 12 November 1817 the Manège was built in honour of the 5th
anniversary of the victory of the Russian troops over Napoleon to a design by
the engineer Augustin Bétancourt. Originally, this spacious building was meant for
holding military reviews, parades and exercises, hence its big size which
Berlioz compares with the Palais de l’Industrie in Paris in his letter to
Damcke above. However, as time went by, it was put to non-military uses, such as
exhibitions and concerts. In our time the Manège building is still used for
holding various exhibitions – for arts, crafts, industry, and many other
purposes. Tragically, the building was destroyed in a fire on 14 March 2004.
Within 13 months the Manège was rebuilt, and reopened on Monday 5 June 2006.
Original copy of the programme of Berlioz’s first concert
Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatoire
On 12 January 1868, the day after his second concert, Berlioz was invited to attend a dinner party at the Moscow Conservatoire. Prince Odoevsky delivered a reception speech; among those who welcomed the French master were Laroche and the young Tchaikovsky.
In 1717 the piece of land which now belongs to the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatoire was bought by the general of the Russian army Prince Vladimir Prosorovsky. In 1755 it became the property of Nikolay Dolgoruky and in 1766 passed over to Princess Ekaterina Dashkova. It was not before 1780 that the first stone building was constructed here. Fifteen years later it was reconstructed as a two-storey building with an attic and two wings (probably by Vasilij Bazhenov). In 1810, after Princess Dashkova’s death, the building was inherited by her nephew Prince Mikhail Vorontsov, a hero of the 1812 Patriotic War. During the invasion of Napoleon’s troops the building was destroyed by fire. Vorontsov had it reconstructed by Camporesi. Thereafter the Russian Music Society rented the building and in 1878 bought it for the Conservatoire from Prince Sergey Vorontsov. In 1894 the old building was taken apart in order to construct a new one, commissioned from the architects Zagorsky and Niesselsohn and the sculptor Alad’in.
Related pages on this site:
The Russia that Berlioz visited, by Dr Linda Edmondson and
Hector Berlioz as reflected in the Russian press of his time, by Dr Elena Dolenko
© 2003-2007 (unless otherwise stated) Michel Austin and Monir Tayeb for all the photos, engravings and information on Berlioz in Russia pages.
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First
visit: 1847