Author Description

The clumsy second act was the primary cause of the vicissitudes that befell Benvenuto Cellini. Not even the Weimar revisions could fully correct the confusions of the denouement. Berlioz behaved gracefully after each failure of Benvenuto Cellini, but ‘I cannot help recognizing’, he wrote in 1850 or so, ‘that it contains a variety of ideas, an energy and exuberance and a brilliance of colour such as I may perhaps never find again, and which deserved a better fate’.