“Where’s Berlioz?” asked my son. The same one who found Richard Tucker too noble in Carmen 25 years earlier.

                We were in Paris, at the Opera. The old house (the Palais Garnier), not the monstrosity at the Place de la Bastille which looks more like a train station than a theater and which fits its surroundings like manure in an operating room. He was translating my question to a lady, of an unfathomable age, seated behind a bridge table in a room off the main foyer; she was guarding the place. He was working in Paris and had acquired fluency in French. It was early afternoon and we had decided to take a tour of the building. The facade of the theater is festooned with busts of composers famous and forgotten, but no Berlioz. Inside there were more dead composers, but again we could not find Berlioz - hence the question.
               The query caused a transformation on the face of the woman, a flash of cultural confusion and embarrassment that she, I think, had never experienced. It had never occurred to her that a French artist of Berlioz’s stature did not have his likeness prominently displayed in The Opera. She picked up the phone that was on the otherwise empty table and dialed someone in a position of higher authority. From what my son gleaned from her questions, she was trying to find a trace of the inimitable Hector in the building. After several calls lasting 20 minutes she told us that there was a small bust of Berlioz in an alcove on one of the upper floors. She also told us in obvious distress that it wasn’t very good. We left in search of the statue which we eventually found. It wasn’t very good.
               The French who always seem on guard against any outside threat to their culture don’t seem to appropriately value it themselves - hence their treatment of the most original French artist of the 19th century and in my opinion their greatest composer of any century. Thus it happens that the great Berlioz revival of the last generation is a phenomenon largely based in Britain and the United States. If you want to hear the great Berlioz performances commemorating the 200th anniversary of his birth the place to be is New York or London. It also is no accident that the definitive biography of Berlioz is in English - David Cairns two volume work which is the best musical biography I’ve yet read. Berlioz’s Mémoires are indispensable, of course, but it is a fantasy on his life; it is of even greater interest as literature than biography. To add the list of the shabby treatment the French still give Berlioz is that he hasn’t yet been elected to the Pantheon and Les Troyens hadn’t received complete performance in Paris (at the time of the publication of the second volume of Cairn’s biography). The Théâtre du Châtelet is going to give it in October. Thus it was that I went last month to New York to hear Berlioz.
               Romeo et Juliette was performed at Avery Fischer Hall in Lincoln Center on Friday evening March 7th by the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under the direction of Colin Davis. While there are three solo parts, the work is symphony which takes it inspiration from Shakespeare and its form from Beethoven’s 9th symphony. Like all of Berlioz’s works it’s unique. It’s an almost two hour long fantasy inspired by the play scored for gigantic forces. Colin Davis has the work in his marrow and got the orchestra and chorus to meet all of the piece’s immense challenges. The playing and singing was so good that the hall’s infamous acoustics sounded just fine. Berlioz as is now generally recognized, certainly in English speaking countries, is much more than just the best orchestrator ever, he is a master melodist and uses musical forms with power and delicacy (depending on the need). Consider the counterpoint of the Festivities at the Capulets or the Love scene depicted without words by an amazingly transparent orchestra.
             Tenor  Stuart Neill was a bit of luxury casting in a part much too small for his gifts. I guess he sang the part solely because he was to sing Faust with the same orchestra two days later. I’ll discuss him below. Sara Mingardo showed a fine contralto voice. Alastair Miles was dramatically indignant as Friar Lawrence. But the real star was Davis and his orchestra and chorus. Amazingly vigorous at 75, he got every nuance from his fine orchestra and a chorus of Englishmen who seemed imbued with Berlioz’s Gallic version of Shakespeare.
               The Damnation of Faust was even better. Berlioz’s Dramatic Legend or Concert Opera is as difficult to perform as it is to categorize. Because there are rudimentary stage directions in the text, the temptation to stage the piece if often irresistible. I saw it staged in West Berlin before the wall fell. It didn’t work. The pit orchestra could not be heard as Berlioz intended and the action was unintelligible. Under Davis the orchestra was brilliant. All of Berlioz’s subtle bits that are easy to lose in a recorded performance were clear and dazzling. The mocking humor of the chorus and the devil were incisively depicted. That house was lit and everyone had a copy of the libretto allowed the performance to play out in the mind’s stage as Berlioz intended. The Ride to the Abyss and Pandemonium displayed Berlioz’s total mastery of large forces. It was so marvelous a sound that the audience will likely never forget it. The final apotheosis was as heavenly as the preceding din was hellish. The only other conductor I’ve heard who could master Berlioz’s orchestral hardware supermarket as well as Davis was Charles Munch. Yet every instrument packed onto the stage was there for a reason.
               Stuart Neill in the title role showed a large lyric tenor ideal for Edgardo, Gounod’s Faust as well as Berlioz doomed hero. Though a little tight at the start his voice loosened in short order. He’s still quite young and one could reasonably have high hopes for his future. The only cloud on his tenorial horizon is his weight. He’s morbidly obese and I don’t know how long his health can hold if he doesn’t lose weight, or as is likely, gains more. By comparison, Pavarotti at his largest was svelte.