Hector Berlioz (1803-69)
La mort d’Ophélie, for voice and ensemble (1842)
Few composers have felt so strong an affinity with the works of Shakespeare as Hector Berlioz. In his Memoirs, Berlioz described his first encounter with the Bard in 1827 as striking him “like a thunderbolt. The lightning flash of that sublime discovery opened before me at a stroke the whole heaven of art, illuminating it to its remotest depths. I recognized,” he wrote, “the meaning of dramatic grandeur, beauty, and truth.”
He also, that same night, first encountered his future wife, the actress Harriet Smithson, performing the role of Ophelia in Hamlet. Berlioz was bowled over by her performance – so was most of Paris – and Smithson became the great love of his life. Their courtship was peculiar (the hyper-passionate Berlioz found himself unable to speak directly to Smithson for several years, some of which time he spent in Italy), and their eventual marriage ended disastrously (she didn’t speak French, he didn’t speak English, and the two had virtually nothing in common), but she was his muse, inspiring most notably the Symphonie fantastique, though the impression of her performance as Juliet most surely influenced – in some way – Berlioz’s subsequent symphony based on the play.
La mort d’Ophélie, or The Death of Ophelia, was written in 1842, setting a poem by Berlioz’s friend, Ernest Legouvé, that paraphrases the Queen’s speech on Ophelia’s death in Act 4 of Hamlet. The music is stunning in its portrayal of text and scene, opening with a depiction of the gently rippling river in which Ophelia drowned and culminating in a striking passage that illustrates the manner of Ophelia’s death.
© Jonathan Blumhofer
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