Hector Berlioz, Béatrice et Bénédict (1862)

Here's Berlioz' last opera, and also the last of his operas I hadn't seen. He was a pretty dern great composer! I'm a fan.

As you can guess, probably, this is based on Much Ado About Nothing, but--as you would probably ALSO guess from the title--a streamlined version: the focus is on the title characters (which is the most interesting place for it to be, really); Hero and Claudio, the other couple, have much reduced roles; the wikipedia page claims that Claudio is a baritone, but I'm not actually convinced that he even has a singing role. There's no Don John (or any other villain); no one trying to trick anyone about anyone's degree of faithfulness. Basically, the title characters like needling each other and they never want to get married because they DO NOT BELIEVE in love. But of course they are hiding their true feelings, and when their respective friends contrive to get them each to "overhear" them talking about how much the other is into them, all bets are off. An old and simple story that remains tremendously appealing.

Of course, this being an opera comique, there is, alone among Berlioz' operas, spoken dialogue, of which I'm never a huge fan. Here a lot of it is this odd sort of semi-spoken/semi-sung stuff as a pompous maestro, Somarone, tries to get a chorus to perform to his specifications. Berlioz wrote the libretto himself, and honestly, I get the impression that he found this a lot more hilarious than I did.

But why cavil? Of course, the music is delightful. It's Berlioz; what more do you need? The production we have here, from Glyndebourne in 2016, is a trifle odd: it is dominated by grays and whites, with a bunch of abstract, boxy structures that look to be made of cardboard. It's not awful or anything, it doesn't really detract from the opera, but its purpose is a little inscrutable, and honestly, I sort of wanted more colors at times. My eyes get bored looking at the same dang ol' colors all the time! Of course, that could also be a criticism of black-and-white movies, but I think the difference is that you wouldn't expect anything else from those: here, you know there's at least the possibility of color; you're just not getting it. Dang it!