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Article Excerpt
Hector Berlioz. Incomplete Operas. Edited by Ric Graebner and Paul Banks. Kassel: Barenreiter, 2002. (New Edition of the Complete Works, 4.) (Musica Gallica.) [Gen. pref. in Eng., Fr., Ger., p. vii; foreword, p. viii-xxvi; score, 316 p. (includes facsims.); crit. notes, p. 317-26; facsims., p. 327-30; appendices, p. 331-45. Cloth. ISMN M-006-47144-7; Barenreiter-Ausgabe 5444. [euro]268.] Contains: Les francs-juges; La nonne sanglante.
Like many composers in the nineteenth century, Hector Berlioz dreamed of having a successful operatic premiere in Paris. Although this goal eluded his three surviving operas--Benvenuto Cellini (1834-37), Les Troyens (1856-58), and Beatrice et Benedict (1860-62)--we know that he contemplated other works throughout his career for theaters in Paris as well. Some of these works never got beyond the planning stage, others were begun but never finished, and one (Estelle et Nemorin, 1823) was completed but then destroyed. Fragments of two of these unfinished compositions, Les francs-juges and La nonne sanglante, comprise the contents of this volume of incomplete operas edited by Ric Graebner and Paul Banks for the New Berlioz Edition; a third unfinished work, the intermede antique Erigone, appears in volume 21, Miscellaneous Works and Index, edited by Hugh Macdonald (2005).
Written in 1825-26 to a libretto by Humbert Ferrand (1805-1868), Les francs-juges is, along with La revolution grecque (1825-26) and the recently discovered Messe solennelle (1824), the earliest of Berlioz's large-scale works to survive. The opera's plot, which deals with the secret Vehmic tribunals during the Middle Ages in Germany, reflects the contemporary interest in Gothic subject matter. Thanks in part to Berlioz's extensive correspondence and his Memoires (Paris: Michel Levy freres, 1870; ed. Pierre Citron, rev. ed. [Paris: Flammarion, 2000]; The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz,...
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