149-596: The Beecham Opera Company was an opera company founded by Thomas Beecham which presented opera in English in London and on tour between 1916 and 1920. The initiative was conceived as part of Beecham's campaign to foster musical life during World War I , after the forced closure of the Covent Garden Opera Company, where the conductor had been mounting opera seasons. Conveniently, Beecham's project
298-581: A Stradivarius viola , which he wanted to play in public if he could find the right music. Greatly impressed by the Symphonie fantastique , he asked Berlioz to write him a suitable piece. Berlioz told him that he could not write a brilliantly virtuoso work, and began composing what he called a symphony with viola obbligato , Harold in Italy . As he foresaw, Paganini found the solo part too reticent – "There's not enough for me to do here; I should be playing all
447-543: A "mild stir", scoring a triumph: the orchestra was agreed by the Berlin press to be an elite body, one of the best in the world. The principal Berlin musical weekly, Die Signale , asked, "Where does London find such magnificent young instrumentalists?" The violins were credited with rich, noble tone, the woodwinds with lustre, the brass, "which has not quite the dignity and amplitude of our best German brass", with uncommon delicacy of execution. Beecham's 1913 seasons included
596-573: A 1967 symposium of prominent critics. Hector Berlioz Louis-Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French Romantic composer and conductor. His output includes orchestral works such as the Symphonie fantastique and Harold in Italy , choral pieces including the Requiem and L'Enfance du Christ , his three operas Benvenuto Cellini , Les Troyens and Béatrice et Bénédict , and works of hybrid genres such as
745-606: A Delius and Sibelius programme; and many of his favoured shorter pieces. He did not stick uncompromisingly to his familiar repertoire. After the sudden death of the German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler in 1954, Beecham in tribute conducted the two programmes his colleague had been due to present at the Festival Hall; these included Bach's Third Brandenburg Concerto , Ravel 's Rapsodie espagnole , Brahms 's Symphony No. 1 , and Barber 's Second Essay for Orchestra . In
894-466: A biographer as "even more certain to deter the public then than it would be in our own day". The principal pieces of his first concert with the orchestra were d'Indy 's symphonic ballad La forêt enchantée , Smetana 's symphonic poem Šárka , and Lalo 's little-known Symphony in G minor . Beecham retained an affection for the last work: it was among the works he conducted at his final recording sessions more than fifty years later. In 1908 Beecham and
1043-763: A composer and achieved some celebrity in the 1920s and 1930s, and Thomas, born in 1909. After the birth of his second child, Beecham began to drift away from the marriage. By 1911, no longer living with his wife and family, he was involved as co-respondent in a much-publicised divorce case. Utica ignored advice that she should divorce him and secure substantial alimony; she did not believe in divorce. She never remarried after Beecham divorced her (in 1943), and she outlived her former husband by sixteen years, dying in 1977. In 1909 or early 1910, Beecham began an affair with Maud Alice (known as Emerald), Lady Cunard . Although they never lived together, it continued, despite other relationships on his part, until his remarriage in 1943. She
1192-474: A concert of his works at the Conservatoire. The programme included the overture of Les Francs-juges , the Symphonie fantastique – extensively revised since its premiere – and Le Retour à la vie , in which Bocage , a popular actor, declaimed the monologues. Through a third party, Berlioz had sent an invitation to Harriet Smithson, who accepted, and was dazzled by the celebrities in the audience. Among
1341-564: A disguise for the purpose. By the time he reached Nice on his journey to Paris he thought better of the scheme, abandoned the idea of revenge, and successfully sought permission to return to the Villa Medici. He stayed for a few weeks in Nice and wrote his King Lear overture. On the way back to Rome he began work on a piece for narrator, solo voices, chorus and orchestra, Le Retour à la vie (The Return to Life, later renamed Lélio ),
1490-618: A large house in Ewanville, Huyton , near Liverpool . Their former home was demolished to make room for an extension to the pill factory. Beecham was educated at Rossall School between 1892 and 1897, after which he hoped to attend a music conservatoire in Germany, but his father forbade it, and instead Beecham went to Wadham College, Oxford to read Classics . He did not find university life to his taste and successfully sought his father's permission to leave Oxford in 1898. He studied as
1639-701: A pianist but, despite his excellent natural talent and fine technique, he had difficulty because of his small hands, and any career as a soloist was ruled out by a wrist injury in 1904. He studied composition with Frederic Austin in Liverpool, Charles Wood in London, and Moritz Moszkowski in Paris. As a conductor, he was self-taught. Beecham first conducted in public in St. Helens in October 1899, with an ad hoc ensemble comprising local musicians and players from
SECTION 10
#17327936069661788-524: A planned Magic Flute and a final appearance at Covent Garden conducting Berlioz's The Trojans . Sixty-six years after his first visit to America, Beecham made his last, beginning in late 1959, conducting in Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and Washington. During this tour, he also conducted in Canada. He flew back to London on 12 April 1960 and did not leave England again. His final concert
1937-518: A programme including works by Berlioz , Bizet , Delius and Mozart . He returned to London the following month, conducting the combined Royal Albert Hall Orchestra (the renamed New Symphony Orchestra) and London Symphony Orchestra in April 1923. The main work on the programme was Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben . No longer with an orchestra of his own, Beecham established a relationship with
2086-536: A projected opera, La Nonne sanglante (The Bloody Nun), to a libretto by Eugène Scribe , but made little progress. In November 1841 he began publishing a series of sixteen articles in the Revue et gazette musicale giving his views about orchestration; they were the basis of his Treatise on Instrumentation , published in 1843. During the 1840s Berlioz spent much of his time making music outside France. He struggled to make money from his concerts in Paris, and learning of
2235-591: A reshuffled version of the London Symphony Orchestra, but the LSO, a self-governing co-operative, balked at weeding out and replacing underperforming players. In 1932 Beecham lost patience and agreed with Sargent to set up a new orchestra from scratch. The London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), as it was named, consisted of 106 players including a few young musicians straight from music college, many established players from provincial orchestras, and 17 of
2384-487: A respected local figure, was a progressively minded doctor credited as the first European to practise and write about acupuncture . He was an agnostic with a liberal outlook; his wife was a strict Roman Catholic of less flexible views. After briefly attending a local school when he was about ten, Berlioz was educated at home by his father. He recalled in his Mémoires that he enjoyed geography, especially books about travel, to which his mind would sometimes wander when he
2533-464: A revival of Les Troyens and none took place for nearly 30 years. He sold the publishing rights for a large sum, and his last years were financially comfortable; he was able to give up his work as a critic, but he lapsed into depression. As well as losing both his wives, he had lost both his sisters, and he became morbidly aware of death as many of his friends and other contemporaries died. He and his son had grown deeply attached to each other, but Louis
2682-628: A rich industrial family, Beecham began his career as a conductor in 1899. He used his access to the family fortune to finance opera from the 1910s until the start of the Second World War, staging seasons at Covent Garden , Drury Lane and His Majesty's Theatre with international stars, his own orchestra and a wide repertoire. Among the works he introduced to England were Richard Strauss 's Elektra , Salome and Der Rosenkavalier and three operas by Frederick Delius . Together with his younger colleague Malcolm Sargent , Beecham founded
2831-687: A ruinously unsuccessful season, first at the Théâtre-Italien and then at lesser venues, and by March 1833 she was deep in debt. Biographers differ about whether and to what extent Smithson's receptiveness to Berlioz's wooing was motivated by financial considerations; but she accepted him, and in the face of strong opposition from both their families they were married at the British Embassy in Paris on 3 October 1833. The couple lived first in Paris, and later in Montmartre (then still
2980-757: A sequel to the Symphonie fantastique . Berlioz took little pleasure in his time in Rome. His colleagues at the Villa Medici, under their benevolent principal Horace Vernet , made him welcome, and he enjoyed his meetings with Felix Mendelssohn , who was visiting the city, but he found Rome distasteful: "the most stupid and prosaic city I know; it is no place for anyone with head or heart." Nonetheless, Italy had an important influence on his development. He visited many parts of it during his residency in Rome. Macdonald comments that after his time there, Berlioz had "a new colour and glow in his music ... sensuous and vivacious" – derived not from Italian painting, in which he
3129-617: A student to the Conservatoire, studying composition under Le Sueur and counterpoint and fugue with Anton Reicha . In the same year he made the first of four attempts to win France's premier music prize, the Prix de Rome , and was eliminated in the first round. The following year, to earn some money, he joined the chorus at the Théâtre des Nouveautés . He competed again for the Prix de Rome, submitting
SECTION 20
#17327936069663278-636: A successful touring company with casts of mainly British singers, including Frank Mullings , who was entrusted with some of the key lead roles. Beecham's company provided the wartime public with opera performances both around the provinces and in London (at the Drury Lane , Shaftesbury and Aldwych theatres), even during the 1917 Zeppelin raids. The repertoire was extensive, and included productions of works as ambitious as Boris Godunov (in French) and Tristan und Isolde . Although Beecham had intended
3427-447: A text edited by the conductor. With Haydn, too, Beecham was far from an authenticist, using unscholarly 19th-century versions of the scores, avoiding the use of the harpsichord , and phrasing the music romantically. He recorded the twelve " London " symphonies, and regularly programmed some of them in his concerts. Earlier Haydn works were unfamiliar in the first half of the 20th century, but Beecham conducted several of them, including
3576-413: A village). On 14 August 1834 their only child, Louis-Clément-Thomas, was born. The first few years of the marriage were happy, although it eventually foundered. Harriet continued to yearn for a career but, as her biographer Peter Raby comments, she never learned to speak French fluently, which seriously limited both her professional and her social life. Paganini, known chiefly as a violinist, had acquired
3725-518: A work of exceptional exuberance and verve, deserving a better reception than it received. Holoman adds that the piece was of "surpassing technical difficulty", and that the singers were not especially co-operative. A weak libretto and unsatisfactory staging exacerbated the poor reception. The opera had only four complete performances, three in September 1838 and one in January 1839. Berlioz said that
3874-545: A youth, subsequently destroying the manuscripts, but one theme that remained in his mind reappeared later as the A-flat second subject of the overture to Les Francs-juges . In March 1821 Berlioz passed the baccalauréat examination at the University of Grenoble – it is not certain whether at the first or second attempt – and in late September, aged seventeen, he moved to Paris. At his father's insistence he enrolled at
4023-420: Is mentioned only in passing or not at all, and suggests that this is partly because Berlioz had no models among his predecessors and was a model to none of his successors. "In his works, as in his life, Berlioz was a lone wolf". Forty years earlier, Sir Thomas Beecham , a lifelong proponent of Berlioz's music, commented similarly, writing that although, for example, Mozart was a greater composer, his music drew on
4172-496: Is not recorded. Almost nothing is known of their relationship, which lasted for less than a year. After they ceased to meet, Amélie died, aged only 26. Berlioz was unaware of it until he came across her grave six months later. Cairns hypothesises that the shock of her death prompted him to seek out his first love, Estelle, now a widow aged 67. He called on her in September 1864; she received him kindly, and he visited her in three successive summers; he wrote to her nearly every month for
4321-515: The Aeneid . Having first completed the orchestration of his 1841 song cycle Les Nuits d'été , he began work on Les Troyens – The Trojans – writing his own libretto based on Virgil's epic. He worked on it, in between his conducting commitments, for two years. In 1858 he was elected to the Institut de France , an honour he had long sought, though he played down the importance he attached to it. In
4470-627: The Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale in 1840. Neither work brought him much money or artistic fame at the time, but the Requiem held a special place in his affections: "If I were threatened with the destruction of the whole of my works save one, I would crave mercy for the Messe des morts ". One of Berlioz's main aims in the 1830s was "battering down the doors of the Opéra". In Paris at this period,
4619-746: The Bourgeois Gentilhomme music and Don Juan also featured in his repertory, but not Also Sprach Zarathustra or Tod und Verklärung . Strauss had the first and last pages of the manuscript of Elektra framed and presented them to "my highly honoured friend ... and distinguished conductor of my work." In the opinion of the jury of the Académie du Disque Français, "Sir Thomas Beecham has done more for French music abroad than any French conductor". Berlioz featured prominently in Beecham's repertoire throughout his career, and in an age when
Beecham Opera Company - Misplaced Pages Continue
4768-999: The Gazette musicale and the Journal des débats . He was the first, but not the last, prominent French composer to double as a reviewer: among his successors were Fauré , Messager , Dukas and Debussy . Although he complained – both privately and sometimes in his articles – that his time would be better spent writing music than in writing music criticism, he was able to indulge himself in attacking his bêtes noires and extolling his enthusiasms. The former included musical pedants, coloratura writing and singing, viola players who were merely incompetent violinists, inane libretti, and baroque counterpoint . He extravagantly praised Beethoven's symphonies, and Gluck's and Weber 's operas, and scrupulously refrained from promoting his own compositions. His journalism consisted mainly of music criticism, some of which he collected and published, such as Evenings in
4917-703: The Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hallé in Manchester. A month later, he stood in at short notice for the celebrated conductor Hans Richter at a concert by the Hallé to mark Joseph Beecham's inauguration as mayor of St Helens. Soon afterwards, Joseph Beecham secretly committed his wife to a mental hospital. Thomas and his elder sister Emily helped to secure their mother's release and to force their father to pay annual alimony of £4,500. For this, Joseph disinherited them. Beecham
5066-567: The Metropolitan Opera as joint senior conductor with his former assistant Bruno Walter. He began with his own adaptation of Bach's comic cantata, Phoebus and Pan , followed by Le Coq d'Or . His main repertoire was French: Carmen, Louise (with Grace Moore), Manon , Faust , Mignon and The Tales of Hoffmann . In addition to his Seattle and New York posts, Beecham was guest conductor with 18 American orchestras. In 1944, Beecham returned to Britain. Musically his reunion with
5215-466: The Opéra-Comique ; at the former, three weeks after his arrival, he saw Gluck 's Iphigénie en Tauride , which thrilled him. He was particularly inspired by Gluck's use of the orchestra to carry the drama along. A later performance of the same work at the Opéra convinced him that his vocation was to be a composer. The dominance of Italian opera in Paris, against which Berlioz later campaigned,
5364-720: The Royal Albert Hall Orchestra. In 1909, Beecham founded the Beecham Symphony Orchestra. He did not poach from established symphony orchestras, but instead he recruited from theatre bandrooms, local symphony societies, the palm courts of hotels, and music colleges. The result was a youthful team – the average age of his players was 25. They included names that would become celebrated in their fields, such as Albert Sammons , Lionel Tertis , Eric Coates and Eugene Cruft . Because he persistently programmed works that did not attract
5513-490: The Symphony No. 40 and an early piano concerto. He programmed The Seasons regularly throughout his career, recording it for EMI in 1956, and in 1944 added The Creation to his repertoire. For Beecham, Mozart was "the central point of European music," and he treated the composer's scores with more deference than he gave most others. He edited the incomplete Requiem , made English translations of at least two of
5662-402: The "dramatic symphony" Roméo et Juliette and the "dramatic legend" La Damnation de Faust . The elder son of a provincial physician, Berlioz was expected to follow his father into medicine, and he attended a Parisian medical college before defying his family by taking up music as a profession. His independence of mind and refusal to follow traditional rules and formulas put him at odds with
5811-411: The "professors, pedants, pedagogues". He followed Mendelssohn and Mozart in editing and reorchestrating Handel's scores to suit contemporary tastes. At a time when Handel's operas were scarcely known, Beecham knew them so well that he was able to arrange three ballets, two other suites and a piano concerto from them. He gave Handel's oratorio Solomon its first performance since the 18th century, with
5960-570: The 1920 season, Beecham temporarily withdrew from conducting to deal with a financial problem that he described as "the most trying and unpleasant experience of my life". Influenced by an ambitious financier, James White , Sir Joseph Beecham had agreed, in July 1914, to buy the Covent Garden estate from the Duke of Bedford and float a limited company to manage the estate commercially. The deal
6109-518: The Beecham Symphony Orchestra played for Sergei Diaghilev 's Ballets Russes , both at Covent Garden and at the Krolloper in Berlin, under the batons of Beecham and Pierre Monteux , Diaghilev's chief conductor. Beecham was much admired for conducting the complicated new score of Stravinsky 's Petrushka , at two days' notice and without rehearsal, when Monteux became unavailable. While in Berlin, Beecham and his orchestra, in Beecham's words, caused
Beecham Opera Company - Misplaced Pages Continue
6258-663: The Beethoven symphonies during his career, and he made studio recordings of Nos. 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8, and live recordings of No. 9 and Missa Solemnis . He conducted the Fourth Piano Concerto with pleasure (recording it with Arthur Rubinstein and the LPO) but avoided the Emperor Concerto when possible. Beecham was not known for his Bach but nonetheless chose Bach (arranged by Beecham) for his debut at
6407-575: The Beethovensaal in Berlin in the same years. As his sixtieth birthday approached, Beecham was advised by his doctors to take a year's complete break from music, and he planned to go abroad to rest in a warm climate. The Australian Broadcasting Commission had been seeking for several years to get him to conduct in Australia. The outbreak of war on 3 September 1939 obliged him to postpone his plans for several months, striving instead to secure
6556-658: The British premiere of Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier at Covent Garden, and a "Grand Season of Russian Opera and Ballet" at Drury Lane . At the latter there were three operas, all starring Feodor Chaliapin , and all new to Britain: Mussorgsky 's Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina , and Rimsky-Korsakov 's Ivan the Terrible . There were also 15 ballets, with leading dancers including Vaslav Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina . The ballets included Debussy 's Jeux and his controversially erotic L'après-midi d'un faune , and
6705-489: The British premiere of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring , six weeks after its first performance in Paris. Beecham shared Monteux's private dislike of the piece, much preferring Petrushka . Beecham did not conduct during this season; Monteux and others conducted the Beecham Symphony Orchestra. The following year, Beecham and his father presented Rimsky-Korsakov's The Maid of Pskov and Borodin 's Prince Igor , with Chaliapin, and Stravinsky's The Nightingale . During
6854-553: The British première of Strauss's Arabella . During 1933 and 1934, Beecham repelled attempts by John Christie to form a link between Christie's new Glyndebourne Festival and the Royal Opera House. Beecham and Toye fell out over the latter's insistence on bringing in a popular film star, Grace Moore , to sing Mimi in La bohème . The production was a box-office success, but an artistic failure. Beecham manoeuvred Toye out of
7003-460: The Conservatoire and as an officer of the Legion of Honour . The former was an undemanding post, but not highly paid, and Berlioz remained in need of a reliable income to allow him the leisure for composition. The Symphonie funèbre et triomphale , marking the tenth anniversary of the 1830 Revolution, was performed in the open air under the direction of the composer in July 1840. The following year
7152-454: The Duke's staff, and in October 1916, Joseph Beecham died suddenly, with the transaction still uncompleted. The matter was brought before the civil courts with the aim of disentangling Sir Joseph's affairs; the court and all parties agreed that a private company should be formed, with his two sons as directors, to complete the Covent Garden contract. In July 1918, the Duke and his trustees conveyed
7301-710: The First World War, Beecham strove, often without a fee, to keep music alive in London, Liverpool, Manchester and other British cities. He conducted for, and gave financial support to, three institutions with which he was connected at various times: the Hallé Orchestra, the LSO and the Royal Philharmonic Society. In 1915 he formed the Beecham Opera Company , with mainly British singers, performing in London and throughout
7450-562: The Hallé Orchestra as a guest conductor ceased after John Barbirolli became the orchestra's chief conductor in 1944. Beecham was, to his great indignation, ousted from the honorary presidency of the Hallé Concerts Society, and Barbirolli refused to "let that man near my orchestra". Beecham's relationship with the Liverpool Philharmonic, which he had first conducted in 1911, was resumed harmoniously after
7599-504: The Irish Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson , and he pursued her obsessively until she finally accepted him seven years later. Their marriage was happy at first but eventually foundered. Harriet inspired his first major success, the Symphonie fantastique , in which an idealised depiction of her occurs throughout. Berlioz completed three operas, the first of which, Benvenuto Cellini , was an outright failure. The second,
SECTION 50
#17327936069667748-481: The LSO's leading members. The principals included Paul Beard , George Stratton, Anthony Pini , Gerald Jackson , Léon Goossens , Reginald Kell , James Bradshaw and Marie Goossens . The orchestra made its debut at the Queen's Hall on 7 October 1932, conducted by Beecham. After the first item, Berlioz's Roman Carnival Overture , the audience went wild, some of them standing on their seats to clap and shout. During
7897-601: The London Philharmonic was triumphant, but the orchestra, now, after his help in 1939, a self-governing co-operative , attempted to hire him on its own terms as its salaried artistic director. "I emphatically refuse", concluded Beecham, "to be wagged by any orchestra ... I am going to found one more great orchestra to round off my career." When Walter Legge founded the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1945, Beecham conducted its first concert. But he
8046-940: The London Philharmonic, and he conducted its first performance at the Queen's Hall in 1932. In the 1940s he worked for three years in the United States, where he was music director of the Seattle Symphony and conducted at the Metropolitan Opera . After his return to Britain, he founded the Royal Philharmonic in 1946 and conducted it until his death in 1961. Beecham's repertoire was eclectic, sometimes favouring lesser-known composers over famous ones. His specialities included composers whose works were neglected in Britain before he became their advocate, such as Delius and Berlioz . Other composers with whose music he
8195-566: The London Symphony Orchestra that lasted for the rest of the 1920s. Towards the end of the decade, he negotiated inconclusively with the BBC over the possibility of establishing a permanent radio orchestra. In 1931, Beecham was approached by the rising young conductor Malcolm Sargent with a proposal to set up a permanent, salaried orchestra with a subsidy guaranteed by Sargent's patrons, the Courtauld family. Originally Sargent and Beecham envisaged
8344-825: The Metropolitan Opera. He later gave the Third Brandenburg Concerto in one of his memorial concerts for Wilhelm Furtwängler (a performance described by The Times as "a travesty, albeit an invigorating one"). In Brahms's music, Beecham was selective. He made a speciality of the Second Symphony but conducted the Third only occasionally, the First rarely, and the Fourth never. In his memoirs he made no mention of any Brahms performance after
8493-570: The New Symphony Orchestra parted company, disagreeing about artistic control and, in particular, the deputy system. Under this system, orchestral players, if offered a better-paid engagement elsewhere, could send a substitute to a rehearsal or a concert. The treasurer of the Royal Philharmonic Society described it thus: " A , whom you want, signs to play at your concert. He sends B (whom you don't mind) to
8642-454: The North American tour, Beecham conducted 49 concerts in almost daily succession. In 1951, he was invited to conduct at Covent Garden after a 12-year absence. State-funded for the first time, the opera company operated quite differently from his pre-war regime. Instead of short, star-studded seasons, with a major symphony orchestra, the new director David Webster was attempting to build up a permanent ensemble of home-grown talent performing all
8791-454: The Opéra commissioned Berlioz to adapt Weber's Der Freischütz to meet the house's rigid requirements: he wrote recitatives to replace the spoken dialogue and orchestrated Weber's Invitation to the Dance to provide the obligatory ballet music. In the same year he completed settings of six poems by his friend Théophile Gautier, which formed the song cycle Les Nuits d'été (with piano accompaniment, later orchestrated). He also worked on
8940-481: The Orchestra (1854), but also more technical articles, such as those that formed the basis of his Treatise on Instrumentation (1844). Despite his complaints, Berlioz continued writing music criticism for most of his life, long after he had any financial need to do so. Berlioz secured a commission from the French government for his Requiem – the Grande messe des morts – first performed at Les Invalides in December 1837. A second government commission followed –
9089-411: The Orchestra. … The musicians were entirely unselfconscious with him. Instinctively they accorded him the artistic authority which he did not expressly claim. Thus he obtained the best from them and they gave it without reserve." By the early 1930s, Beecham had secured substantial control of the Covent Garden opera seasons. Wishing to concentrate on music-making rather than management, he assumed
SECTION 60
#17327936069669238-445: The Rue de Calais on 8 March 1869, at the age of 65. He was buried in Montmartre Cemetery with his two wives, who were exhumed and re-buried next to him. In his 1983 book The Musical Language of Berlioz , Julian Rushton asks "where Berlioz comes in the history of musical forms and what is his progeny". Rushton's answers to these questions are "nowhere" and "none". He cites well-known studies of musical history in which Berlioz
9387-445: The School of Medicine of the University of Paris . He had to fight hard to overcome his revulsion at dissecting bodies, but in deference to his father's wishes, he forced himself to continue his medical studies. The horrors of the medical college were mitigated thanks to an ample allowance from his father, which enabled him to take full advantage of the cultural, and particularly musical, life of Paris. Music did not at that time enjoy
9536-421: The Villa Medici before the end of his two-year term. Heeding Vernet's advice that it would be prudent to delay his return to Paris, where the Conservatoire authorities might be less indulgent about his premature ending of his studies, he made a leisurely journey back, detouring via La Côte-Saint-André to see his family. He left Rome in May 1832 and arrived in Paris in November. On 9 December 1832 Berlioz presented
9685-442: The basis of Huit scènes de Faust (Berlioz's Opus 1), which premiered the following year and was reworked and expanded much later as La Damnation de Faust . Berlioz was largely apolitical, and neither supported nor opposed the July Revolution of 1830, but when it broke out he found himself in the middle of it. He recorded events in his Mémoires : I was finishing my cantata when the revolution broke out ... I dashed off
9834-533: The company to be a permanent venture, it was disbanded in 1920 when financial problems over buying the Bedford Estate forced him to withdraw temporarily from the music scene. Many of the performers joined the British National Opera Company (1922–1929), a replacement venture which bought the entire assets of the Beecham company, comprising the scenery, costumes, scores, instruments and performing rights for 48 operas. Thomas Beecham Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet , (29 April 1879 – 8 March 1961)
9983-449: The composer's works received little exposure, Beecham presented most of them and recorded many. Along with Sir Colin Davis , Beecham has been described as one of the two "foremost modern interpreters" of Berlioz's music. Both in concert and the recording studio, Beecham's choices of French music were characteristically eclectic. He avoided Ravel but regularly programmed Debussy. Fauré did not feature often, although his orchestral Pavane
10132-532: The concert Berlioz set off for Italy: under the terms of the Prix de Rome, winners studied for two years at the Villa Medici , the French Academy in Rome . Within three weeks of his arrival he went absent without leave: he had learnt that Marie had broken off their engagement and was to marry an older and richer suitor, Camille Pleyel , the heir to the Pleyel piano manufacturing company. Berlioz made an elaborate plan to kill them both (and her mother, known to him as "l'hippopotame"), and acquired poisons, pistols and
10281-434: The conservative musical establishment of Paris. He briefly moderated his style sufficiently to win France's premier music prize – the Prix de Rome – in 1830, but he learned little from the academics of the Paris Conservatoire . Opinion was divided for many years between those who thought him an original genius and those who viewed his music as lacking in form and coherence. At the age of twenty-four Berlioz fell in love with
10430-431: The country. In 1916, he received a knighthood in the New Year Honours and succeeded to the baronetcy on his father's death later that year. After the war, there were joint Covent Garden seasons with the Grand Opera Syndicate in 1919 and 1920, but these were, according to a biographer, pale confused echoes of the years before 1914. These seasons included forty productions, of which Beecham conducted only nine. After
10579-423: The decade was La Damnation de Faust . He presented it in Paris in December 1846, but it played to half-empty houses, despite excellent reviews, some from critics not usually well disposed to his music. The highly romantic subject was out of step with the times, and one sympathetic reviewer observed that there was an unbridgeable gap between the composer's conception of art and that of the Paris public. The failure of
10728-450: The eldest child of Louis Berlioz (1776–1848), a physician, and his wife, Marie-Antoinette Joséphine, née Marmion (1784–1838). His birthplace was the family home in the commune of La Côte-Saint-André in the département of Isère , in south-eastern France. His parents had five more children, three of whom died in infancy; their surviving daughters, Nanci and Adèle, remained close to Berlioz throughout their lives. Berlioz's father,
10877-480: The end and knelt in homage to Berlioz and kissed his hand. A few days later Berlioz was astonished to receive a cheque from him for 20,000 francs. Paganini's gift enabled Berlioz to pay off Harriet's and his own debts, give up music criticism for the time being, and concentrate on composition. He wrote the "dramatic symphony" Roméo et Juliette for voices, chorus and orchestra. It was premiered in November 1839 and
11026-467: The end of 1822 he felt that his attempts to learn composition needed to be augmented with formal tuition, and he approached Jean-François Le Sueur , director of the Royal Chapel and professor at the Conservatoire, who accepted him as a private pupil. In August 1823 Berlioz made the first of many contributions to the musical press: a letter to the journal Le Corsaire defending French opera against
11175-483: The epic Les Troyens (The Trojans), was so large in scale that it was never staged in its entirety during his lifetime. His last opera, Béatrice et Bénédict – based on Shakespeare's comedy Much Ado About Nothing – was a success at its premiere but did not enter the regular operatic repertoire. Meeting only occasional success in France as a composer, Berlioz increasingly turned to conducting, in which he gained an international reputation. He
11324-409: The estate to the new company, subject to a mortgage of the balance of the purchase price still outstanding: £1.25 million. Beecham and his brother Henry had to sell enough of their father's estate to discharge this mortgage. For more than three years, Beecham was absent from the musical scene, working to sell property worth over £1 million. By 1923 enough money had been raised. The mortgage
11473-510: The exception of a revival of Benvenuto Cellini at Covent Garden which was withdrawn after one performance. The opera was presented in Leipzig in 1852 in a revised version prepared by Liszt with Berlioz's approval and was moderately successful. In the early years of the decade Berlioz made numerous appearances in Germany as a conductor. In 1854 Harriet died. Both Berlioz and their son Louis had been with her shortly before her death. During
11622-410: The failure of the piece meant that the doors of the Opéra were closed to him for the rest of his career – which they were, except for a commission to arrange a Weber score in 1841. Shortly after the failure of the opera, Berlioz had a great success as composer-conductor of a concert at which Harold in Italy was given again. This time Paganini was present in the audience; he came on to the platform at
11771-579: The final pages of my orchestral score to the sound of stray bullets coming over the roofs and pattering on the wall outside my window. On the 29th I had finished, and was free to go out and roam about Paris till morning, pistol in hand. The cantata was La Mort de Sardanapale , with which he won the Prix de Rome. His entry the previous year, Cléopâtre , had attracted disapproval from the judges because to highly conservative musicians it "betrayed dangerous tendencies", and for his 1830 offering he carefully modified his natural style to meet official approval. During
11920-758: The first of his Prix cantatas , La Mort d'Orphée , in July. Later that year he attended productions of Shakespeare 's Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet at the Théâtre de l'Odéon given by Charles Kemble 's touring company. Although at the time Berlioz spoke hardly any English, he was overwhelmed by the plays – the start of a lifelong passion for Shakespeare. He also conceived a passion for Kemble's leading lady, Harriet Smithson – his biographer Hugh Macdonald calls it "emotional derangement" – and obsessively pursued her, without success, for several years. She refused even to meet him. The first concert of Berlioz's music took place in May 1828, when his friend Nathan Bloc conducted
12069-531: The first rehearsal. B , without your knowledge or consent, sends C to the second rehearsal. Not being able to play at the concert, C sends D , whom you would have paid five shillings to stay away." Henry Wood had already banned the deputy system in the Queen's Hall Orchestra (provoking rebel players to found the London Symphony Orchestra), and Beecham followed suit. The New Symphony Orchestra survived without him and subsequently became
12218-443: The future of the London Philharmonic, whose financial guarantees had been withdrawn by its backers when war was declared. Before leaving, Beecham raised large sums of money for the orchestra and helped its members to form themselves into a self-governing company. Beecham left Britain in the spring of 1940, going first to Australia and then to North America. He became music director of the Seattle Symphony in 1941. In 1942 he joined
12367-527: The great operas, and introduced Covent Garden audiences who had rarely if ever heard them to Così fan tutte , Der Schauspieldirektor and Die Entführung aus dem Serail ; he also regularly programmed The Magic Flute , Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro . He considered the best of Mozart's piano concertos to be "the most beautiful compositions of their kind in the world", and he played them many times with Betty Humby-Beecham and others. Beecham's attitude towards 19th-century German repertoire
12516-475: The incursions of its Italian rival. He contended that all Rossini 's operas put together could not stand comparison with even a few bars of those of Gluck, Spontini or Le Sueur. By now he had composed several works including Estelle et Némorin and Le Passage de la mer Rouge (The Crossing of the Red Sea) – both since lost. In 1824 Berlioz graduated from medical school, after which he abandoned medicine, to
12665-523: The large sums made by promoters from performances of his music in other countries, he resolved to try conducting abroad. He began in Brussels, giving two concerts in September 1842. An extensive German tour followed: in 1842 and 1843 he gave concerts in twelve German cities. His reception was enthusiastic. The German public was better disposed than the French to his innovative compositions, and his conducting
12814-429: The managing directorship in what their fellow conductor Sir Adrian Boult described as an "absolutely beastly" manner. From 1935 to 1939, Beecham, now in sole control, presented international seasons with eminent guest singers and conductors. Beecham conducted between a third and half of the performances each season. He intended the 1940 season to include the first complete performances of Berlioz's Les Troyens , but
12963-455: The more than two dozen operas in the Verdi canon, Beecham conducted eight during his long career: Il trovatore , La traviata , Aida , Don Carlos , Rigoletto , Un ballo in maschera , Otello and Falstaff . As early as 1904, Beecham met Puccini through the librettist Luigi Illica , who had written the libretto for Beecham's youthful attempt at composing an Italian opera. At
13112-445: The musical success that mattered was in the opera house and not the concert hall. Robert Schumann commented, "To the French, music by itself means nothing". Berlioz worked on his opera Benvenuto Cellini from 1834 until 1837, continually distracted by his increasing activities as a critic and as a promoter of his own symphonic concerts. The Berlioz scholar D. Kern Holoman comments that Berlioz rightly regarded Benvenuto Cellini as
13261-402: The musicians present were Liszt, Frédéric Chopin and Niccolò Paganini ; writers included Alexandre Dumas , Théophile Gautier , Heinrich Heine , Victor Hugo and George Sand . The concert was such a success that the programme was repeated within the month, but the more immediate consequence was that Berlioz and Smithson finally met. By 1832 Smithson's career was in decline. She presented
13410-530: The new generation of Russian composers and the general public, but he returned to Paris visibly unwell. He went to Nice to recuperate in the Mediterranean climate, but fell on rocks by the shore, possibly because of a stroke, and had to return to Paris, where he convalesced for several months. In August 1868, he felt able to travel briefly to Grenoble to judge a choral festival. After arriving back in Paris he gradually grew weaker and died at his house in
13559-516: The next eight years, the LPO appeared nearly a hundred times at the Queen's Hall for the Royal Philharmonic Society alone, played for Beecham's opera seasons at Covent Garden, and made more than 300 gramophone records. Berta Geissmar , his secretary from 1936, wrote, "The relations between the Orchestra and Sir Thomas were always easy and cordial. He always treated a rehearsal as a joint undertaking with
13708-608: The next eight years. He wrote a Te Deum , completed in 1849 but not published until 1855, and some short pieces. His most substantial work between The Damnation and his epic Les Troyens (1856–1858) was a "sacred trilogy", L'Enfance du Christ (Christ's Childhood), which he began in 1850. In 1851 he was at the Great Exhibition in London as a member of an international committee judging musical instruments. He returned to London in 1852 and 1853, conducting his own works and others'. He enjoyed consistent success there, with
13857-452: The original. At around the same time he encountered two further creative inspirations: Beethoven and Goethe . He heard Beethoven's third , fifth and seventh symphonies performed at the Conservatoire, and read Goethe's Faust in Gérard de Nerval 's translation. Beethoven became both an ideal and an obstacle for Berlioz – an inspiring predecessor but a daunting one. Goethe's work was
14006-499: The outbreak of the Second World War caused the season to be abandoned. Beecham did not conduct again at Covent Garden until 1951, and by then it was no longer under his control. Beecham took the London Philharmonic on a controversial tour of Germany in 1936. There were complaints that he was being used by Nazi propagandists, and Beecham complied with a Nazi request not to play the Scottish Symphony of Mendelssohn , who
14155-423: The paying public. In his early discussions with his new orchestra, he proposed works by a long list of barely known composers such as Étienne Méhul , Nicolas Dalayrac and Ferdinando Paer . During this period, Beecham first encountered the music of Frederick Delius , which he at once loved deeply and with which he became closely associated for the rest of his life. Beecham quickly concluded that to compete with
14304-465: The performance, and the press reviews expressed both the shock and the pleasure the work had given. Berlioz's biographer David Cairns calls the concert a landmark not only in the composer's career but in the evolution of the modern orchestra. Franz Liszt was among those attending the concert; this was the beginning of a long friendship. Liszt later transcribed the entire Symphonie fantastique for piano to enable more people to hear it. Shortly after
14453-405: The piano, and throughout his life played haltingly at best. He later contended that this was an advantage because it "saved me from the tyranny of keyboard habits, so dangerous to thought, and from the lure of conventional harmonies". At the age of twelve Berlioz fell in love for the first time. The object of his affections was an eighteen-year-old neighbour, Estelle Dubœuf. He was teased for what
14602-633: The piece in German. In 1953 at Oxford , Beecham presented the world premiere of Delius's first opera, Irmelin , and his last operatic performances in Britain were in 1955 at Bath , with Grétry 's Zémire et Azor . Between 1951 and 1960, Beecham conducted 92 concerts at the Royal Festival Hall . Characteristic Beecham programmes of the RPO years included symphonies by Bizet, Franck , Haydn , Schubert and Tchaikovsky ; Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben ; concertos by Mozart and Saint-Saëns ;
14751-418: The piece left Berlioz heavily in debt; he restored his finances the following year with the first of two highly remunerative trips to Russia. His other foreign tours during the rest of the 1840s included Austria, Hungary, Bohemia and Germany. After those came the first of his five visits to England; it lasted for more than seven months (November 1847 to July 1848). His reception in London was enthusiastic, but
14900-527: The premieres of the overtures Les Francs-juges and Waverley and other works. The hall was far from full, and Berlioz lost money. Nevertheless, he was greatly encouraged by the vociferous approval of his performers, and the applause from musicians in the audience, including his Conservatoire professors, the directors of the Opéra and Opéra-Comique, and the composers Auber and Hérold . Berlioz's fascination with Shakespeare's plays prompted him to start learning English during 1828, so that he could read them in
15049-458: The prestige of literature in French culture, but Paris nonetheless possessed two major opera houses and the country's most important music library. Berlioz took advantage of them all. Within days of arriving in Paris he went to the Opéra , and although the piece on offer was by a minor composer, the staging and the magnificent orchestral playing enchanted him. He went to other works at the Opéra and
15198-421: The public, Beecham's musical activities at this time consistently lost money. As a result of his estrangement from his father between 1899 and 1909, his access to the Beecham family fortune was strictly limited. From 1907 he had an annuity of £700 left to him in his grandfather's will, and his mother subsidised some of his loss-making concerts, but it was not until father and son were reconciled in 1909 that Beecham
15347-752: The resident orchestra at Glyndebourne each summer. He secured backing, including that of record companies in the US as well as Britain, with whom lucrative recording contracts were negotiated. As in 1909 and in 1932, Beecham's assistants recruited in the freelance pool and elsewhere. Original members of the RPO included James Bradshaw, Dennis Brain , Leonard Brain, Archie Camden , Gerald Jackson and Reginald Kell. The orchestra later became celebrated for its regular team of woodwind principals, often referred to as "The Royal Family", consisting of Jack Brymer (clarinet), Gwydion Brooke (bassoon), Terence MacDonagh (oboe) and Gerald Jackson (flute). Beecham's long association with
15496-524: The rest of his life. In 1867 Berlioz received the news that his son had died in Havana of yellow fever . Macdonald suggests that Berlioz may have sought distraction from his grief by going ahead with a planned series of concerts in St Petersburg and Moscow, but far from rejuvenating him, the trip sapped his remaining strength. The concerts were successful, and Berlioz received a warm response from
15645-490: The rival Grand Opera Syndicate put on a concurrent season of its own at Covent Garden; London's total opera performances for the year amounted to 273 performances, far more than the box-office demand could support. Of the 34 operas that Beecham staged in 1910, only four made money: Richard Strauss 's new operas Elektra and Salome , receiving their first, and highly publicised, performances in Britain, and The Tales of Hoffmann and Die Fledermaus . In 1911 and 1912,
15794-564: The role of artistic director, and Geoffrey Toye was recruited as managing director. In 1933, Tristan und Isolde with Frida Leider and Lauritz Melchior was a success, and the season continued with the Ring cycle and nine other operas. The 1934 season featured Conchita Supervía in La Cenerentola , and Lotte Lehmann and Alexander Kipnis in the Ring . Clemens Krauss conducted
15943-473: The same year he completed Les Troyens . He then spent five years trying to have it staged. In June 1862 Berlioz's wife died suddenly, aged 48. She was survived by her mother, to whom Berlioz was devoted, and who looked after him for the rest of his life. Les Troyens – a five-act, five-hour opera – was on too large a scale to be acceptable to the management of the Opéra, and Berlioz's efforts to have it staged there failed. The only way he could find of seeing
16092-411: The same year he wrote the Symphonie fantastique and became engaged to be married. By now recoiling from his obsession with Smithson, Berlioz fell in love with a nineteen-year-old pianist, Marie ("Camille") Moke . His feelings were reciprocated, and the couple planned to be married. In December Berlioz organised a concert at which the Symphonie fantastique was premiered. Protracted applause followed
16241-403: The strong disapproval of his parents. His father suggested law as an alternative profession and refused to countenance music as a career. He reduced and sometimes withheld his son's allowance, and Berlioz went through some years of financial hardship. In 1824 Berlioz composed a Messe solennelle . It was performed twice, after which he suppressed the score, which was thought lost until a copy
16390-607: The summer of 1958, Beecham conducted a season at the Teatro Colón , Buenos Aires, Argentina, consisting of Verdi's Otello , Bizet's Carmen , Beethoven's Fidelio , Saint-Saëns's Samson and Delilah and Mozart's The Magic Flute . These were his last operatic performances. It was during this season that Betty Humby died suddenly. She was cremated in Buenos Aires and her ashes returned to England. Beecham's own last illness prevented his operatic debut at Glyndebourne in
16539-406: The time of their meeting, Puccini and Illica were revising Madama Butterfly after its disastrous première. Beecham rarely conducted that work, but he conducted Tosca , Turandot and La bohème . His 1956 recording of La bohème , with Victoria de los Ángeles and Jussi Björling , has seldom been out of the catalogues since its release and received more votes than any other operatic set in
16688-550: The time" – and the violist at the premiere in November 1834 was Chrétien Urhan . Until the end of 1835 Berlioz had a modest stipend as a laureate of the Prix de Rome. His earnings from composing were neither substantial nor regular, and he supplemented them by writing music criticism for the Parisian press. Macdonald comments that this was activity "at which he excelled but which he abhorred". He wrote for L'Europe littéraire (1833), Le Rénovateur (1833–1835), and from 1834 for
16837-406: The two existing London orchestras, the Queen's Hall Orchestra and the recently founded London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), his forces must be expanded to full symphonic strength and play in larger halls. For two years starting in October 1907, Beecham and the enlarged New Symphony Orchestra gave concerts at the Queen's Hall. He paid little attention to the box office: his programmes were described by
16986-465: The visit was not a financial success because of mismanagement by his impresario, the conductor Louis-Antoine Jullien . Soon after Berlioz's return to Paris in mid-September 1848, Harriet suffered a series of strokes , which left her almost paralysed. She needed constant nursing, which he paid for. When in Paris he visited her continually, sometimes twice a day. After the failure of La Damnation de Faust , Berlioz spent less time on composition during
17135-406: The war. A manager of the orchestra recalled, "It was an unwritten law in Liverpool that first choice of dates offered to guest conductors was given to Beecham. ... In Liverpool there was one over-riding factor – he was adored." Beecham, whom the BBC called "Britain's first international conductor", took the RPO on a strenuous tour through the United States, Canada and South Africa in 1950. During
17284-500: The work produced was to divide it into two parts: "The Fall of Troy" and "The Trojans at Carthage". The latter, consisting of the final three acts of the original, was presented at the Théâtre‐Lyrique, Paris, in November 1863, but even that truncated version was further truncated: during the run of 22 performances, number after number was cut. The experience demoralised Berlioz, who wrote no more music after this. Berlioz did not seek
17433-468: The year 1909. Beecham was a great Wagnerian , despite his frequent expostulation about the composer's length and repetitiousness: "We've been rehearsing for two hours – and we're still playing the same bloody tune!" Beecham conducted all the works in the regular Wagner canon with the exception of Parsifal , which he presented at Covent Garden but never with himself in the pit. The chief music critic of The Times observed: "Beecham's Lohengrin
17582-560: The year Berlioz completed the composition of L'Enfance du Christ , worked on his book of memoirs, and married Marie Recio, which, he explained to his son, he felt it his duty to do after living with her for so many years. At the end of the year the first performance of L'Enfance du Christ was warmly received, to his surprise. He spent much of the next year in conducting and writing prose. During Berlioz's German tour in 1856, Liszt and his companion, Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein , encouraged Berlioz's tentative conception of an opera based on
17731-446: The year round, in English translations. Extreme economy in productions and great attention to the box-office were essential, and Beecham, though he had been hurt and furious at his exclusion, was not suited to participate in such an undertaking. When offered a chorus of eighty singers for his return, conducting Die Meistersinger , he insisted on augmenting their number to 200. He also, contrary to Webster's policy, insisted on performing
17880-625: Was Zélie de Lussan , a leading exponent of the title role. Beecham was also composing music in these early years, but he was not satisfied with his own efforts and instead concentrated on conducting. In 1906 Beecham was invited to conduct the New Symphony Orchestra , a recently formed ensemble of 46 players, in a series of concerts at the Bechstein Hall in London. Throughout his career, Beecham frequently chose to programme works to suit his own tastes rather than those of
18029-416: Was 27, he 80. The earliest composer whose music Beecham regularly performed was Handel , whom he called, "the great international master of all time. ... He wrote Italian music better than any Italian; French music better than any Frenchman; English music better than any Englishman; and, with the exception of Bach, outrivalled all other Germans." In his performances of Handel, Beecham ignored what he called
18178-495: Was a Christian by faith but a Jew by birth. In Berlin, Beecham's concert was attended by Adolf Hitler , whose lack of punctuality caused Beecham to remark very audibly, "The old bugger's late." After this tour, Beecham refused renewed invitations to give concerts in Germany, although he honoured contractual commitments to conduct at the Berlin State Opera , in 1937 and 1938, and recorded The Magic Flute for EMI in
18327-517: Was a captain in the merchant navy, and was more often than not away from home. Berlioz's physical health was not good, and he was often in pain from an intestinal complaint, possibly Crohn's disease . After the death of his second wife, Berlioz had two romantic interludes. During 1862 he met – probably in the Montmartre Cemetery – a young woman less than half his age, whose first name was Amélie and whose second, possibly married, name
18476-516: Was a tireless fund-raiser for his musical enterprises. Beecham's biographers are agreed that she was in love with him, but that his feelings for her were less strong. During the 1920s and 1930s, Beecham also had an affair with Dora Labbette , a soprano sometimes known as Lisa Perli, with whom he had a son, Paul Strang, born in March 1933. Strang, a lawyer who served on the boards of several musical institutions, died in April 2024. In 1943 Lady Cunard
18625-459: Was able to draw on many former members of the Edinburgh -based Denhof Opera Company , thereby effectively continuing the earlier company's work. The company was formed with mainly British singers, with New Zealander Rosina Buckman a notable exception; she was assigned the role of a principal dramatic soprano. Supported financially by Beecham's father, Joseph , the new outfit quickly turned into
18774-474: Was able to draw on the family fortune to promote opera. From 1910, subsidised by his father, Beecham realised his ambition to mount opera seasons at Covent Garden and other houses. In the Edwardian opera house, the star singers were regarded as all-important, and conductors were seen as ancillary. Between 1910 and 1939 Beecham did much to change the balance of power. In 1910, Beecham either conducted or
18923-448: Was almost Italian in its lyricism; his Ring was less heroic than Bruno Walter's or Furtwängler's, but it sang from beginning to end". Richard Strauss had a lifelong champion in Beecham, who introduced Elektra , Salome , Der Rosenkavalier and other operas to England. Beecham programmed Ein Heldenleben from 1910 until his last year; his final recording of it was released shortly after his death. Don Quixote , Till Eulenspiegel ,
19072-685: Was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras. From the early 20th century until his death, Beecham was a major influence on the musical life of Britain and, according to the BBC , was Britain's first international conductor. Born to
19221-693: Was an exception; Beecham's final recording sessions in 1959 included the Pavane and the Dolly Suite . Bizet was among Beecham's favourites, and other French composers favoured by him included Gustave Charpentier , Delibes , Duparc , Grétry, Lalo, Lully , Offenbach, Saint-Saëns and Ambroise Thomas . Many of Beecham's later recordings of French music were made in Paris with the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française . " C'est un dieu ", their concertmaster said of Beecham in 1957. Of
19370-708: Was at Portsmouth Guildhall on 7 May 1960. The programme, all characteristic choices, comprised the Magic Flute Overture, Haydn's Symphony No. 100 (the Military ), Beecham's own Handel arrangement, Love in Bath , Schubert's Symphony No. 5 , On the River by Delius, and the Bacchanale from Samson and Delilah . Beecham died of a coronary thrombosis at his London residence, aged 81, on 8 March 1961. He
19519-608: Was buried two days later in Brookwood Cemetery , Surrey. Owing to changes at Brookwood, his remains were exhumed in 1991 and reburied in St Peter 's Churchyard at Limpsfield , Surrey, close to the joint grave of Delius and his wife Jelka Rosen . Beecham was married three times. In 1903 he married Utica Celestina Welles, daughter of Dr Charles S. Welles, of New York, and his wife Ella Celeste, née Miles. Beecham and his wife had two sons: Adrian, born in 1904, who became
19668-434: Was described by The Times as "one of the largest ever carried out in real estate in London". Sir Joseph paid an initial deposit of £200,000 and covenanted to pay the balance of the £2 million purchase price on 11 November. Within a month, however, the First World War broke out, and new official restrictions on the use of capital prevented the completion of the contract. The estate and market continued to be managed by
19817-555: Was devastated to learn (not from Beecham) that he intended to divorce Utica to marry Betty Humby , a concert pianist 29 years his junior. Beecham married Betty in 1943, and they were a devoted couple until her death in 1958. On 10 August 1959, two years before his death, he married in Zurich his former secretary, Shirley Hudson, who had worked for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra's administration since 1950. She
19966-418: Was discharged, and Beecham's personal liabilities, amounting to £41,558, were paid in full. In 1924 the Covent Garden property and the pill-making business at St Helens were united in one company, Beecham Estates and Pills. The nominal capital was £1,850,000, of which Beecham had a substantial share. After his absence, Beecham first reappeared on the rostrum conducting the Hallé in Manchester in March 1923, in
20115-523: Was discovered in 1991. During 1825 and 1826 he wrote his first opera, Les Francs-juges , which was not performed and survives only in fragments, the best known of which is the overture. In later works he reused parts of the score, such as the "March of the Guards", which he incorporated four years later in the Symphonie fantastique as the "March to the Scaffold". In August 1826 Berlioz was admitted as
20264-494: Was equivocal. He frequently disparaged Beethoven, Wagner and others, but regularly conducted their works, often with great success. He observed, "Wagner, though a tremendous genius, gorged music like a German who overeats. And Bruckner was a hobbledehoy who had no style at all ... Even Beethoven thumped the tub; the Ninth symphony was composed by a kind of Mr. Gladstone of music." Despite his criticisms, Beecham conducted all
20413-605: Was estranged from his father for ten years. Beecham's professional début as a conductor was in 1902 at the Shakespeare Theatre, Clapham , with Balfe 's The Bohemian Girl , for the Imperial Grand Opera Company. He was engaged as assistant conductor for a tour and was allotted four other operas, including Carmen and Pagliacci . A Beecham biographer calls the company "grandly named but decidedly ramshackle", though Beecham's Carmen
20562-580: Was frequently associated were Haydn , Schubert , Sibelius and the composer he revered above all others, Mozart . Beecham was born in St Helens , Lancashire (now Merseyside), in a house adjoining the Beecham's Pills laxative factory founded by his grandfather, Thomas Beecham . His parents were Joseph Beecham , the elder son of Thomas, and Josephine, née Burnett. In 1885, with the family firm flourishing financially, Joseph Beecham moved his family to
20711-409: Was highly regarded in Germany, Britain and Russia both as a composer and as a conductor. To supplement his earnings he wrote musical journalism throughout much of his career; some of it has been preserved in book form, including his Treatise on Instrumentation (1844), which was influential in the 19th and 20th centuries. Berlioz died in Paris at the age of 65. Berlioz was born on 11 December 1803,
20860-621: Was not disposed to accept a salaried position from Legge, his former assistant, any more than from his former players in the LPO. In 1946, Beecham founded the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO), securing an agreement with the Royal Philharmonic Society that the new orchestra should replace the LPO at all the Society's concerts. Beecham later agreed with the Glyndebourne Festival that the RPO should be
21009-440: Was responsible as impresario for 190 performances at Covent Garden and His Majesty's Theatre . His assistant conductors were Bruno Walter and Percy Pitt . During the year, he mounted 34 different operas, most of them either new to London or almost unknown there. Beecham later acknowledged that in his early years the operas he chose to present were too obscure to attract the public. During his 1910 season at His Majesty's,
21158-418: Was seen as a boyish infatuation, but something of his early passion for Estelle endured all his life. He poured some of his unrequited feelings into his early attempts at composition. Trying to master harmony, he read Rameau's Traité de l'harmonie , which proved incomprehensible to a novice, but Charles-Simon Catel 's simpler treatise on the subject made it clearer to him. He wrote several chamber works as
21307-594: Was seen as highly impressive. During the tour he had enjoyable meetings with Mendelssohn and Schumann in Leipzig , Wagner in Dresden and Meyerbeer in Berlin. By this time Berlioz's marriage was failing. Harriet resented his celebrity and her own eclipse, and as Raby puts it, "possessiveness turned to suspicion and jealousy as Berlioz became involved with the singer Marie Recio ". Harriet's health deteriorated, and she took to drinking heavily. Her suspicion about Recio
21456-694: Was sent to a boarding school in Rouen . Foreign tours featured prominently in Berlioz's life during the 1840s and 1850s. Not only were they highly rewarding both artistically and financially, but he did not have to grapple with the administrative problems of promoting concerts in Paris. Macdonald comments: The more he travelled the more bitter he became about conditions at home; yet though he contemplated settling abroad – in Dresden, for instance, and in London – he always went back to Paris. Berlioz's major work from
21605-434: Was so well received that Berlioz and his huge instrumental and vocal forces gave two further performances in rapid succession. Among the audiences was the young Wagner , who was overwhelmed by its revelation of the possibilities of musical poetry, and who later drew on it when composing Tristan und Isolde . At the close of the decade Berlioz achieved official recognition in the form of appointment as deputy librarian of
21754-500: Was still in the future, and at the opera houses he heard and absorbed the works of Étienne Méhul and François-Adrien Boieldieu , other operas written in the French style by foreign composers, particularly Gaspare Spontini , and above all five operas by Gluck. He began to visit the Paris Conservatoire library in between his medical studies, seeking out scores of Gluck's operas and making copies of parts of them. By
21903-492: Was supposed to be studying Latin; the classics nonetheless made an impression on him, and he was moved to tears by Virgil 's account of the tragedy of Dido and Aeneas . Later he studied philosophy, rhetoric, and – because his father planned a medical career for him – anatomy. Music did not feature prominently in the young Berlioz's education. His father gave him basic instruction on the flageolet , and he later took flute and guitar lessons with local teachers. He never studied
22052-657: Was uninterested, or Italian music, which he despised, but from "the scenery and the sun, and from his acute sense of locale". Macdonald identifies Harold in Italy , Benvenuto Cellini and Roméo et Juliette as the most obvious expressions of his response to Italy, and adds that Les Troyens and Béatrice et Bénédict "reflect the warmth and stillness of the Mediterranean, as well as its vivacity and force". Berlioz himself wrote that Harold in Italy drew on "the poetic memories formed from my wanderings in Abruzzi ". Vernet agreed to Berlioz's request to be allowed to leave
22201-601: Was well founded: the latter became Berlioz's mistress in 1841 and accompanied him on his German tour. Berlioz returned to Paris in mid-1843. During the following year he wrote two of his most popular short works, the overtures Le carnaval romain (reusing music from Benvenuto Cellini ) and Le corsaire (originally called La tour de Nice ). Towards the end of the year he and Harriet separated. Berlioz maintained two households: Harriet remained in Montmartre and he moved in with Recio at her flat in central Paris. His son Louis
#965034