Overture: Le carnaval romain, Op. 9
(Roman Carnival Overture)
Hector Berlioz (1803-69)
Berlioz’s opera Benvenuto Cellini, first performed in 1838, was a huge success. Like a traditional film-maker exploring the shards rescued from the cutting-room floor, Berlioz used musical ideas left over from the sketches for the opera alongside others from the opera itself to create this exuberant overture in 1844. The fast music (based on the Salterello, a festive dance) comes from a point in the opera where it serves to create the atmosphere of a carnival; hence the title of the overture. Like Felix Mendelssohn’s ‘Fingle’s Cave’ overture, it was conceived as a stand-alone concert item. It is an overture to nothing other than the concert itself. As such, it serves its purpose beautifully: a show-piece for the players and an action-packed delight for the audience.
A frantic flourish at the outset quickly leads to a haunting and memorable melody for the cor anglais, repeated in varied form by the cellos, then in canon by the strings and brass. Berlioz cunningly implants the melody into the listener’s memory through these repetitions so that in a magical moment, much later in the overture, we recognised it when the brass instruments play it as a backdrop to the Salterello which continues to scamper full-tilt toward the triumphant conclusion. As in so many of Berlioz’s compositions, Le carnaval romain is packed with innovations, among them the use of the cor anglais as soloist, a mix of trumpets and cornets, an enlarged percussion section, and sparkling counterpoint.