La Symphonie fantastique | |
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Directed by | Christian-Jaque |
Written by | Jean-Pierre Feydeau André Legrand |
Produced by | Alfred Greven |
Cinematography | Armand Thirard |
Edited by | Jacques Desagneaux |
Music by | Hector Berlioz Carl Maria von Weber |
Production company | |
Release date |
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Country | France |
Language | French |
La Symphonie fantastique is a 1942 French drama film by Christian-Jaque [1] and produced by the German-controlled French film production company Continental Films. The film is based upon the life of the French composer Hector Berlioz. The title is taken from the five-movement programmatic Symphonie fantastique of 1830. The film lasts around 90 minutes and was first shown at the 'Normandie' cinema in Paris on 1 April 1942. The posters at the premiere contained the sub-title 'La Vie passionnée et glorieuse d'un génie' (which links with the quote from Hugo at the very end of the film). [2]
The French Bibliothèque du film (BiFi) contains an earlier draft plan for the film which envisaged a less realistic, more fantastic treatment of the story, entitled La Symphonie du rêve, with Pierre Fresnay in the central role. [2]
The cast included several members of the Comédie-Française (Barrault, Saint-Cyr, Seigner, Berthau, Delamare, Fonteney). [2] Barrault took part in a BBC2 programme in 1969 on the centenary of the composer's death, as Berlioz again, and in the autobiographical Lélio, sequel to the symphony. [3] Shortly after the film was released, Goebbels, having learnt of it, was displeased, considering it too patriotic and determined to summon the German producer Alfred Greven to Berlin to remind him that the French should only have light and superficial new films – and not cultivate French nationalism. [2]
The film is biographical, telling the story of the life and artistic struggles of the French composer Hector Berlioz. Berlioz is shown as a recalcitrant medical student in an anatomy class dreaming of becoming a composer; at a demonstration during a performance at the Paris Opéra conducted by Habeneck; at supper with other young artists (Hugo, Janin, Dumas, Mérimée, Delacroix); and chasing after his future wife Harriet Smithson, after a performance of Hamlet . Also depicted are his life in a garret, while suffering from an illness due to an abscess in the throat; a visit from his mother who curses him; and the composition of the Symphonie fantastique . The film then shows his marital breakdown, the premiere of his opera Benvenuto Cellini , his travels throughout Europe, his second marriage to Marie Recio (called "Marie Martin" in the film), public acceptance in old age and reconciliation with his son.
The film makes a vivid recreation of important public sites: a lecture theatre at the Faculty of Medicine, backstage at the Théâtre de l'Odéon, the Paris Opera, Montmartre lanes as well as salons and cafés. [2]
As well as the symphony, the music used in the film includes the Invitation to the Dance by Weber, Roméo et Juliette (during the scene where Berlioz and Smithson fall in love), a staged excerpt from the first act of Benvenuto Cellini, the Rákóczi March from La damnation de Faust and the Requiem .
Louis-Hector Berlioz 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 the "dramatic symphony" Roméo et Juliette and the "dramatic legend" La Damnation de Faust.
Symphonie fantastique: Épisode de la vie d'un artiste … en cinq parties Op. 14, is a programmatic symphony written by Hector Berlioz in 1830. The first performance was at the Paris Conservatoire on 5 December 1830.
This article is about music-related events in 1830.
Benvenuto Cellini is an opera semiseria in four tableaux by Hector Berlioz, his first full-length work for the stage. Premiered at the Académie Royale de Musique on 10 September 1838, it is a setting of a libretto by Léon de Wailly and Henri Auguste Barbier, who invented most of the plot inspired by the memoirs of the Florentine sculptor Benvenuto Cellini. The opera is technically challenging and was until the 21st century rarely performed. But its overture sometimes features in orchestral concerts, as does the concert overture Le carnaval romain which Berlioz composed from material in the opera.
Lélio, ou Le retour à la vie, Op. 14b, is a work incorporating music and spoken text by the French composer Hector Berlioz, intended as a sequel to his Symphonie fantastique. It is written for a narrator, solo tenor and baritone, mixed chorus, and an orchestra including piano.
Harriet Constance Smithson, who also went by Henrietta Constance Smithson, Harriet Smithson Berlioz, and Miss H.C. Smithson, was an Anglo-Irish Shakespearean actress of the 19th century, best known as the first wife and muse of Hector Berlioz.
Events from the year 1830 in France.
François Antoine Habeneck was a French classical violinist and conductor.
A Journey Through Fairyland is a 1985 Japanese animated film by Sanrio, the company which animated Unico, The Sea Prince and the Fire Child and Ringing Bell, though this story is less sought out as a rarity among Sanrio cult classic collectors. It was Sanrio's final feature-length anime film until 2007. It was brought to America in 1989 through a company called Celebrity Home Entertainment. Unlike previous works, this one mainly focuses on music more than plot, prompting it to be compared with Disney's older work Fantasia. The one original piece is "My Name is Florence," which contains lyrics and is sung in the film; all other songs on the soundtrack are works of classical composition, written by Beethoven and other similarly noteworthy composers.
Les francs-juges is the title of an unfinished opera by the French composer Hector Berlioz written to a libretto by his friend Humbert Ferrand in 1826. Berlioz abandoned the incomplete composition and destroyed most of the music. He retained the overture, which has become a popular concert item, and used some other musical material in later compositions.
Messe solennelle is a setting of the Catholic missa solemnis by the French composer Hector Berlioz. It was written in 1824, when the composer was twenty, and first performed at the Saint-Roch, Paris, on 10 July 1825, and again at the Saint-Eustache in 1827. After this, Berlioz claimed to have destroyed the entire score, except for the Resurrexit, but in 1991 a Belgian schoolteacher, Frans Moors, came across a copy of the work in an organ gallery in Antwerp, and it has since been revived.
French composer Hector Berlioz wrote a number of "overtures", many of which have become popular concert works. They include true overtures, intended to introduce operas, but also independent concert overtures that are in effect the first orchestral tone poems.
The French composer Hector Berlioz made four attempts at winning the Prix de Rome music prize, finally succeeding in 1830. As part of the competition, he had to write a cantata to a text set by the examiners. Berlioz's efforts to win the prize are described at length in his Memoirs. He regarded it as the first stage in his struggle against the musical conservatism represented by the judges, who included established composers such as Luigi Cherubini, François-Adrien Boieldieu and Henri-Montan Berton. Berlioz's stay in Italy as a result of winning the prize also had a great influence on later works such as Benvenuto Cellini and Harold en Italie. The composer subsequently destroyed the scores of two cantatas almost completely and reused music from all four of them in later works. There was a revival of interest in the cantatas in the late 20th century, particularly Cléopâtre, which has become a favourite showcase for the soprano and mezzo-soprano voice.
Adolphe-Abraham Samuel was a Belgian music critic, teacher, conductor and composer.
Alsatian conductor Charles Munch was one of the most widely recorded symphonic conductors of the twentieth century. Here is a partial list of his recordings.
Lise Delamare was a French stage and film actress.
Marie Recio, née Marie-Geneviève Martin was a French 19th-century opera singer (mezzo-soprano), the second wife of Hector Berlioz.
The style of architecture and design under King Louis Philippe I (1830–1848) was a more eclectic development of French neoclassicism, incorporating elements of neo-Gothic and other styles. It was the first French decorative style imposed not by royalty, but by the tastes of the growing French upper class. In painting, neoclassicism and romanticism contended to become the dominant style. In literature and music, France had a golden age, as the home of Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, and other major poets and artists.
Romanticism was a literary and artistic movement that appeared in France in the late 18th century, largely in reaction against the formality and strict rules of the official style of neo-classicism. It reached its peak in the first part of the 19th century, in the writing of François-René de Chateaubriand and Victor Hugo, the poetry of Alfred de Vigny; the painting of Eugène Delacroix; the music of Hector Berlioz; and later in the architecture of Charles Garnier. It was gradually replaced beginning in the late 19th century by the movements of Art Nouveau, realism and modernism.
In 2003 the film was re-issued by René Chateau Video.