Ravinia Festival

The reputations of the great composers are not immutable or carved in stone. Composers who were once lionized as the greatest of their times have seen their ratings dip significantly over the course of history, composers such as Georg Philipp Telemann, Antonio Salieri and Giacomo Meyerbeer. Others who are accorded the highest regard today were once considered secondary figures outside of the mainstream repertoire, including such giants as Johann Sebastian Bach, Gustav Mahler and even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

So it has been with Hector-Louis Berlioz. As recently as 50 years ago, his significance in the annals of music history was seriously challenged, and it was only through the ardent advocacy of persistent musicologists, conductors and performers that his greatness was finally acknowledged.

Berlioz was hampered even in his own day by his image as a non-conformist, a rebel who answered only to his own demanding standards and unique vision. His works were considered unplayable, too immense, making excessive demands upon the resources of the musical institutions of his time. But it was this very iconoclasm that would ultimately solidify his reputation as the great archetypal Romantic. The notion of the artist as outsider, as someone who answers to a higher calling than the rest of us, whose greatness rests in his works themselves, whether they are appreciated by audiences of his own time or not, was born and developed during the Romantic era.

Berlioz's first great masterpiece, and the subject of Ravinia's new One Score, One Chicago program, was his Symphonie fantastique, which premiered in 1830. During the decade leading up to it, Beethoven composed his last symphony, the "Choral" Symphony No. 9 (which would be a great influence upon Berlioz's own Roméo et Juliette symphony); Mendelssohn composed his first symphony; Weber's opera Der Freischütz (which Berlioz would alter adapt for French tastes) took German opera into the Romantic era; Schubert composed his great swan-song, the Winterreise song-cycle; and Rossini's last opera, Guillaume Tell, established the genre of French grand opéra.

In the decade following the premiere of Symphonie fantastique, Berlioz would compose his second symphony, Harold in Italy; his Grande Messe des Morts; the opera Benvenuto Cellini; and his third symphony, Roméo et Juliette. During those same ten years in the world of opera, Gaetano Donizetti scored first major success with Anna Bolena; Vincenzo Bellini composed his crowning masterpiece, Norma; Meyerbeer began his dominance of Parisian opera circles with Robert le Diable; and Wagner would compose his first opera, Die Feen. Romanticism was in full swing.

No one better fits the image of the Romantic composer than Berlioz. Inspired by literature and theater, driven by obsessive love, unafraid to venture outside the safe confines of academic forms, he created a new aesthetic world, one in which he ruled supreme and in which his audiences would be expected to surrender themselves to the passions he so eloquently evoked. Today his world beckons to us more irresistibly than ever, and music lovers throughout the world surrender to his charms with enthusiasm.


	One Score - One Chicago - Ravinia's U.'s interactive exploration of Symphonie Fantastique. Click here to learn more!

Ravinia Festival 2003 has created a compelling mix of time-honored classics with provocative, exciting new work! Click here for special Season Highlights!