Béatrice et Bénédict

The director of the production, Alexander Petrov, shares his insights: "Before being invited to stage this opera at the Bolshoi Theatre, I was only familiar with two or three numbers from the score, usually performed in opera galas. So, Berlioz's Béatrice et Bénédict was a complete revelation to me. I can't say the same about Shakespeare and his comedy Much Ado About Nothing, on which Berlioz based his libretto. I directed excerpts from this comedy in my student years.
“There's a connection to Shakespeare that turned out to be almost decisive for me. He wrote his comedy around 1600 in England, a country exhausted and scarred by the war with Spain – the depleted adversaries were on the verge of concluding the Treaty of London. When people live with war at their doorstep or directly participate in it and return from it, their consciousness operates in a peculiar way. The brutality, the scorched soul, and the resulting cynicism force them to perceive peaceful life, its values, and its mystifications in a completely different light. Shakespeare sets the play in the Sicilian city of Messina. And during the First World War, in the bay of the Ionian Sea near Messina, the Italians defeated the Austrians. I felt that we needed that particular war for the performance – the First World War, closer and more familiar, and therefore more acutely impactful.
“From this chain of ideas, the concept of shifting the events in time emerged – to a sanatorium where wounded soldiers are recuperating and resting from the bloodshed. The setting is a formal garden of trimmed bushes, a mysterious labyrinth for weaving intrigue. Béatrice et Bénédict is largely a comedy of manners. It allows for numerous dramaturgical tricks, like one character listening from under the bed to his own sentence, another stealthily catching a phrase uttered between tangled shady alleys...
“This material is incredibly vibrant and overflowing with emotions: chaotic quarrels, endless intrigues, exchanges of ironic barbs, and timid declarations of love. Berlioz responds sensitively and precisely to the spirited plot collisions with luxurious musical inventions. He has phenomenal lyricism in the female duets and trios, magnificent humour when he parodies the Kapellmeister Somarone ('somaro' in Italian means 'donkey'), choruses reflecting the Italians' love for choral singing...
“And yet, Berlioz's Béatrice et Bénédict is a story about love. Despite the outward, feigned eccentricity, each of the characters is largely defenceless and lonely. And the elaborate mystification suddenly allows for the manifestation of a sincere and naive feeling that sweeps everything in its path. Mental 'walls' are overcome only by love: it helps everyone find their way out of the dark inner garden-labyrinth with its diverging paths.”