CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Mariinsky Orchestra

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 at 8:00 PM

Mariinsky Orchestra
Valery Gergiev, Music Director and Conductor
Ekaterina Semenchuk, Mezzo-Soprano
Dmitry Voropaev, Tenor
Evgeny Nikitin, Bass
Chorus of the Mariinsky Theater
Andrei Petrenko, Chorus Master

BERLIOZ Roméo et Juliette

Program is approximately 1 hour, 40 minutes, and will be performed without intermission

This concert is underwritten by Yoko Nagae Ceschina.

This concert and the Choral Classics series are made possible, in part, by an endowment fund for choral music established by S. Donald Sussman in memory of Judith Arron and Robert Shaw.

Program Notes:

HECTOR BERLIOZ (1803–1869)
Roméo et Juliette, Dramatic Symphony for Soloists, Chorus, and Orchestra, Op. 17

Original Inspiration

Near the end of his career, while writing Les Troyens, Berlioz fondly looked back 20 years to the composition of Roméo et Juliette, a period when he was so seized by the intensity of his material that he could barely muster the control to get his inspiration on paper. “Passionate subjects must be dealt with in cold blood,” he believed, but his bloodstream always seemed hot. The initial surge of inspiration was Berlioz’s first encounter with Shakespeare at the Odéon Theatre in 1827, a “sudden and unexpected revelation” that overwhelmed the 24-year-old Berlioz—though he knew little English—and left him “scarcely able to breathe.” Like earlier Romantic poets and later Romantic composers, Berlioz loved Shakespeare for his passion, his freedom and flexibility of expression, and his willingness to mix genres and break compositional rules. Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, The Tempest, and King Lear all found their way into Berlioz’s oeuvre. As David Cairnes puts it, Shakespeare became “the closet thing to a god that existed” for Berlioz .

A less sublime occasion for Berlioz’s inspiration was his instant and obsessive infatuation with the English actress Harriett Smithson, whom Berlioz regarded as his Juliet, Desdemona, and Ophelia, and for whom, as an elaborate seduction strategem, he wrote his 1830 Symphonie fantastique. The ghoulish ending of the symphony, in which a glowing love affair ends up literally in hell, turned out to have an ironic aptness: Berlioz married his Juliet, but the marriage collapsed in a spectacle of acrimony and alcohol more appropriate for O’Neill than Shakespeare.

Fortunately, Berlioz’s romantic fantasies survived vulgar reality. Following his disastrous marriage, he began work on Roméo et Juliette, which had been burning in his imagination for a decade. The practical impetus was a generous, timely gift of 20,000 francs from Paganini, a rapturous fan of Berlioz’s Harold en Italie, at a time when Berlioz, smarting from the failure of Benvenuto Cellini, was too broke to launch an expensive large-scale work. “Beethoven is dead, and Berlioz alone can revive him,” wrote Paganini to Berlioz, begging him to accept the money. In a moving response, Berlioz thanked the “glorious artist to whom I owe so much” and vowed to “write a really important work, something splendid on a grand and original plan, full of passion and imagination.”


About the Music

Following Shakespeare’s lead—and Beethoven’s, whose Ninth Symphony was the bridge to Berlioz’s Romanticism—Berlioz mixed genres, creating a “dramatic symphony” for orchestra, soloists, and chorus. The vocal sections have a pristine delicacy anticipating the style of L’Enfance du Christ a decade later; with the exception of Friar Laurence’s lengthy aria in the finale, the solos and choruses (translated into French by Berlioz’s friend Émile Deschamps) are primarily expository rather than operatic. Berlioz made clear in his preface to this hybrid symphony that the most interior parts of Shakespeare’s story were entrusted not to voices, “as had been done a thousand times before,” but to instruments. An orchestra, he believed, gave his “imagination a wider latitude” than words, offering “a richer, more varied, less fixed language, which because of its very indefiniteness is incomparably more powerful.”

The above is as concise a manifesto for the new Romanticism as one is likely to find, and the premiere of Roméo et Juliette at the Paris Conservatory in 1839 was greeted as a revolution. Berlioz himself conducted, to an audience described by Balzac as “the brain of Paris.” At one of the three performances that season—an unprecedented number for a new symphony—the young Richard Wagner heralded a new visionary world of music and referenced the finale when he came to write Tannhäuser. When Berlioz brought Roméo excerpts to Prague, Liszt proposed a toast to Berlioz’s “erupting crater of genius” and later issued instructions on how to conduct the fiendishly difficult scherzo, counseling long fermatas (a Berlioz signature) and antique cymbals.

Berlioz meant the work to be symphonic rather than operatic, and its basic structure conforms more or less to a four-movement symphony: An elaborate first movement sets up the story, a langorous slow one depicts the balcony scene, a fantastical scherzo captures the nocturnal flittings of Queen Mab, and a multi-layered finale represents the final tragedy and reconciliation, building to a grandiose choral coda.


A Closer Listen

The first movement opens with a slashing fugato depicting “Combat,” “Tumult,” and the “Intervention of the Prince.” A pianissimo unison for first violins represents Romeo the solitary lover, an example of the strange austerity that coexists with Berlioz’s sensuality. When this sinuous figuration is finally harmonized, it becomes a long melody, full of yearning, suggesting Romeo’s melancholy. In one of the most memorable sequences of the symphony, distant, fragmented sounds of the encroaching Capulet ball interrupt Romeo’s sadness, and he suddenly confronts the sight that transforms his life: A hush descends on the orchestra, and Juliet appears, evoked by a larghetto oboe melody beneath which gathering dance rhythms continue to pulsate. The glitter of the Capulet festivities fades as Romeo perceives that he “n’er saw true beauty ‘til this night.” Orchestrated with consummate delicacy—a ghostly tambourine, muted violins, and pizzicato cellos accompanying Juliet’s seductive oboe—this music is a startling prophecy of Debussy’s impressionism a half-century later. As the Capulet bacchanal eclipses Romeo’s reveries, Berlioz unleashes unprecedented rhythmic complexity, with the sudden lurches, stops, and speed-ups that give his fast movements their special freneticism.

The following slow movement contains the most celebrated pages in the score. Berlioz himself regarded this love scene as “the best writing I have ever done.” He certainly never composed a more shapely or impassioned melody than the long adagio tune depicting young love. For contrast, he provides an attenuated dialogue between the two lovers, precisely sketched in a colloquy between unison strings and woodwinds.

The Scherzo (Queen Mab, or the Fairy of Dreams), interrupts Shakespeare’s narrative with a display of orchestral wizardry—Berlioz’s most delicate dreamscape. This eruption of the supernatural, which seems to appear out of nowhere, is actually anticipated by the tenor soloist in the first movement: “On the moon’s silver ray, she gallops night by night through lovers’ brains and haunts them.” With its fantastical colors and surreal spacial effects, this fast-flying movement sounds like Mendelssohn on hallucinogens, and indeed Berlioz did discuss the Queen Mab idea with the composer of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the 19th century’s template for subtle spookery.

If Queen Mab conforms in format to a scherzo, the finale departs drastically from any traditional notion of a symphony movement. Depicting Juliet’s funeral procession, Romeo’s vault scene, the lovers dying before each others’ eyes (the Garrick ending), Friar Laurence’s explanation, and a final reconciliation, this sectional finale combines some of Berlioz’s most austere, proto-modernist fugal writing with moments of gripping operatic intensity. The spectacular coda, where double and small chorus join with full orchestra, brings everything together in a much-needed catharsis. Difficult and expensive to stage, Roméo et Juliette has been the subject of many pared-down arrangements and orchestral excerpts, but only the complete work delivers the grandeur Berlioz intended.

—Jack Sullivan

© 2010 The Carnegie Hall Corporation

More Information:

One master pays tribute to another: Berlioz translates Shakespeare into music, echoing the youthful passion and moral message of Romeo and Juliet. He transforms the story into a gigantic symphony, remaining true to Shakespeare, while creating something that magnifies the play and its meaning.

Mariinsky Orchestra
Valery Gergiev, Music Director and Conductor
Valery Gergiev

Valery Gergiev’s inspired leadership as Artistic and General Director of the Mariinsky Theatre since 1988 has taken Mariinsky ensembles to 45 countries—presenting the best of Russian operas and ballets, as well as the complete Shostakovich and Prokofiev symphonies and Wagner’s Ring cycle—and has brought universal acclaim to this legendary institution, now in its 226th season.

The Mariinsky Label’s releases in the first year include Shostakovich’s The Nose and Symphonies Nos. 1 and 15, a Tchaikovsky disc of short pieces, Shchedrin’s The Enchanted Wanderer, and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and “Paganini” Variations. The label’s first two recordings received five Grammy Award nominations, including Best Opera Recording and Best Classical Album (The Nose) and Best Orchestral Performance (Symphonies 1 and 15), as well as additional nominations for engineering and production.

Presently Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Gergiev is also founder and Artistic Director of the Stars of the White Nights and New Horizons festivals in St. Petersburg, the Moscow Easter Festival, the Gergiev Rotterdam Festival, the Mikkeli Music Festival, and the Red Sea Festival in Israel. He succeeded Sir Georg Solti as conductor of the World Orchestra for Peace in 1998.

Born in Moscow, Mr. Gergiev studied conducting with Ilya Musin at the Leningrad Conservatory. At age 24, he was the winner of the Herbert von Karajan Conductors’ Competition in Berlin, and made his Mariinsky Opera debut one year later in 1978, conducting Prokofiev’s War and Peace. In 2003, he led St. Petersburg’s 300th anniversary celebrations and opened the Carnegie Hall season with the Mariinsky Orchestra, the first Russian conductor to do so since Tchaikovsky conducted the Hall’s inaugural concert in 1891.

Highlights of the 2008–2009 season included a Prokofiev cycle at Lincoln Center, a cycle of Prokofiev symphonies and concertos with the London Symphony Orchestra in Paris and Tokyo, and the Mariinsky Theatre’s production of Wagner’s Ring at Covent Garden, London.

In the 2009–2010 season, Maestro Gergiev conducts Berlioz’s Les Troyens in St. Petersburg, Valencia, and at Carnegie Hall. He also conducts the New York Philharmonic in a three-week Stravinsky festival, presents a Mariinsky Shostakovich cycle in Vienna, leads works of Henri Dutilleux with the London Symphony, and conducts Shostakovich’s The Nose at the Metropolitan Opera. In the 2010–2011 season, he offers a Mahler cycle in London, New York, Paris, and Japan.

Maestro Gergiev is the recipient of a Grammy Award, the Dmitri Shostakovich Award, Golden Mask Award, People’s Artist of Russia Award, the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award, Sweden’s Polar Music Prize, Netherlands’s Knight of the Order of the Dutch Lion, Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun, Valencia’s Silver Medal, the Herbert von Karajan Prize, and France’s Royal Order of the Legion of Honor.

Mr. Gergiev’s recordings of Mahler’s Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, and 8 have been released on LSO Live, as part of a complete recorded Mahler cycle. Future LSO Live recordings will include Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Prokofiev’s complete Romeo and Juliet.


Mariinsky Orchestra

The Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre—which celebrated the theater’s 225th Anniversary in 2008—enjoys a long and distinguished history as one of the oldest musical institutions in Russia. Founded in the 18th century during the reign of Peter the Great, the orchestra entered its “golden age” in the second half of the 19th century under the musical direction of Eduard Nápravnik (1863 to 1916).

The theater’s many highlights include the world premiere of Verdi’s La forza del destino, as well as the first Russian performances of Wagner’s Ring cycle, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Parsifal; Richard Strauss’s Elektra, Salome, and Der Rosenkavalier; and Berg’s Wozzeck. Numerous internationally famed musicians have conducted the orchestra, among them Hans von Bülow, Felix Mottl, Felix Weingartner, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Otto Nikisch, Willem Mengelberg, Otto Klemperer, Bruno Walter, Erich Kleiber, Hector Berlioz, Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, and Arnold Schoenberg.

Renamed the Kirov during the Soviet era, the orchestra continued to maintain its high artistic standards under the leadership of Yevgeny Mravinsky and Yuri Temirkanov. The theater recently reclaimed the Mariinsky name and, under the leadership of Valery Gergiev, has forged important relationships with the world’s greatest opera houses and concert halls.

Under the baton of Valery Gergiev, the orchestra recorded exclusively for Universal Philips and Decca Classics since 1989. Since 1992, the orchestra has made 14 tours of North America, including a 2006 celebration of the complete Shostakovich symphonies and a 2008 cycle of the stage works of Prokofiev.

November 2006 marked the grand opening of the orchestra’s new home at the Mariinsky Theatre Concert Hall. The only theater and concert venue of its kind in Russia, the hall is on the site of the historic Set Workshop, which served the Mariinsky for over a century and created some of its most famous productions. The hall’s acoustics, the work of Yasuhisa Toyota, have brought accolades ranking it alongside the world’s finest modern concert venues.

The orchestra currently records on its Mariinsky Label; recent releases include Shostakovich’s The Nose and Symphonies Nos. 1 and 15, works by Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and “Paganini” Variations. The label’s first two recordings received five Grammy nominations.

Ekaterina Semenchuk, Mezzo-Soprano
Ekaterina Semenchuk

A member of the Mariinsky Theatre, Russian mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk began took part in international tours under Valery Gergiev’s baton to Covent Garden, La Scala, Teatro Real, the Metropolitan Opera, Washington Opera, Salzburg Festival, Israel, China, and many European countries. In St. Petersburg she appeared as Fenena in Nabucco, the title role in Carmen, Nicklausse in Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Laura in The Stone Guest, Hanna in May Night, and many others.

Past appearances include the role of Preziosilla in La forza del Destino at the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, where she also sang Paulina in The Queen of Spades conducted by Daniel Barenboim; Marina in Boris Godunov at Opéra de Monte-Carlo; Olga in Eugene Onegin at Aix-en-Provence conducted by Daniel Harding; Ascanio in Benvenuto Cellini at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden; and Charlotte in Werther at Oper Graz. She sang the title role of Carmen at the Opera Company of Philadelphia, the Dallas Opera, the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, in Tokyo and Seoul with Myung-whun Chung, and with José Cura in Warsaw. As a recitalist, Ms. Semenchuk has performed at Wigmore Hall and has toured throughout Europe, North America, and Argentina. Her debut recording of Russian songs is available on the Harmonia Mundi label.

Ms. Semenchuk’s concert performances have included Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette with the Göteborgs Symfoniker conducted by Carlo Rizzi and La Mort de Cléopâtre with Gergiev at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Recent stage performances include the roles of Paulina in The Queen of Spades and Olga in Eugene Onegin at the Metropolitan Opera; Olga at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; and Sesto in La clemenza di Tito and Maddalena in Rigoletto for Settimane Musicali di Stresa under Gianandrea Noseda. A commensurate concert artist, Ms. Semenchuk sang Mahler’s Third Symphony with Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Marin Alsop and with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Pietari Inkinen. She has also performed Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder in Japan with the Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor Eliahu Inbal, and Verdi’s Requiem with the Göteborgs Symfoniker under Gustavo Dudamel.

Dmitry Voropaev, Tenor
Dmitry Voropaev

Born in 1980 in Baku, Azerbaijan, Dmitry Voropaev studied at the chorus school of the Academic Glinka Capella and at the St. Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory. Mr. Voropaev was a prizewinner at the 2000 Rimsky-Korsakov International Competition of Young Opera Singers in St. Petersburg, the 2004 International Mirjam Helin International Singing Competition in Finland, and the 2004 International Plácido Domingo Operalia vocal competition. He made his Mariinsky Theatre debut in 2000 as Count Almaviva in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia. Mr. Voropaev is a soloist of the Mariinsky Academy of Young Singers, under the direction of Larissa Gergieva.

Mr. Voropaev’s operatic roles also include Simpleton in Boris Godunov, Lensky in Eugene Onegin, Ivan Lykov in The Tsar’s Bride, Belfiore in Il viaggio a Reims, Ferrando in Così fan tutte, Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore, and the First Jew in Salome. Other repertoire, which he has performed at Academy of Young Singers concerts, includes Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde; Beethoven’s Christus am Ölberge and Ninth Symphony; Bach’s Coffee Cantata, Magnificat, and Christmas Oratorio; Schubert’s Stabat Mater and Mass in G Minor; Handel’s Messiah; Liszt’s Faust Symphony; and Stravinsky’s Pulcinella.

Mr. Voropaev has performed at the opera house in Graz (Austria), the Théâtre du Châtelet (Paris), the Opéra national de Bordeaux, Wigmore Hall (London), the Concertgebouw in Bruges (Belgium), and at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, and has worked with such conductors as Valery Gergiev, Pierre Boulez, Eri Klas, Alexander Titov, Alexander Dmitriev, and Gianandrea Noseda.

Evgeny Nikitin, Bass
Evgeny Nikitin

Born in Murmansk in 1973, bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1992.He was engaged as a soloist at the Mariinsky Theatre while still a student, and has performed the title roles in Boris Godunov and Prince Igor and Amfortas in Parsifal with the company. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 2002 as Dolokhov in War and Peace, and has since returned as Colline in La bohème, Pogner in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Fasolt in Das Rheingold, and Creon in Oedipus Rex. He made his Parisian debut performing the title role of Anton Rubinstein’s The Demon at the Théâtre du Châtelet, and returned there to sing the title role in Boris Godunov.

Engagements this season include Orest in Elektra at the Met, the title role of Der fliegende Holländer in Toronto and New Orleans, Pogner in Cincinnati, and the Verdi Requiem with the National Symphony Orchestra. He makes his Bayerische Staatsoper debut as Jochanaan in Salome, and returns there as Klingsor in Parsifal and as the Herald in a new production of Lohengrin; in addition, he sings Amfortas in a new production of Parsifal in Valencia.

Highlights of recent seasons include the title role in Don Giovanni at Opéra Municipalde Marseille, Thibaut in The Maid of Orleans at the Washington National Opera, Wotan in Die Walküre in Warsaw alongside Plácido Domingo, Fasolt in Das Rheingold at the Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg Easter festivals, the Wanderer in Siegfried at the BBC Proms festival, and Jochanaan, the Herald, Klingsor, and the title role of Dallapiccola’s Il prigioniero at Opéra national de Paris.

Concert engagements include performances at Tanglewood and St. Petersburg’s Stars of the White Nights Festival, with the London Symphony Orchestra and the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, and appearances at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival singing Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death under Christoph Eschenbach.

Mr. Nikitin has recorded Rangoni in Boris Godunov and Remeniuk in Semyon Kotko, both for Philips Classics under Valery Gergiev.

Chorus of the Mariinsky Theater
Andrei Petrenko, Chorus Master