By calling Benvenuto Cellini an "opera semi-seria", Berlioz signalled the problems inherent in his first stage work, which seems unable to decide whether it is a profound exploration of the Renaissance artist's maverick genius or a picaresque romp through his eventful life. Its patchy history in the repertoire illustrates the difficulty of accommodating such a hybrid, and nowadays it is usually heard in concert performances like this, conducted by Roger Norrington with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra as part of the Proms' Berlioz bicentenary celebrations.
There are three viable editions of the score, and Norrington chose to conduct the shortest of them, the three-act "Weimar version" that Berlioz sanctioned when Liszt revived the work in 1852 after it had failed at its Paris premiere 14 years earlier. The dramaturgy of this version (two and a half hours of music) is by no means faultless: the last act, which climaxes with the casting of Cellini's famous Perseus statue, seems to rush to a conclusion after the previous two have dallied withsub-plots and colourful set-pieces. But it's those set pieces that give the work its vitality (part of the second-act finale was transformed into the Roman Carnival overture), and made this performance really came alive.
Norrington is a superb Berlioz conductor, who relishes every spark of invention in the score, every innovatory texture. Though he was conducting a modern-instrument orchestra, he applied some of the principles of period performance, making the strings ration their vibrato and the timpanists use hard sticks, and the textures never blurred. That's quite an achievement in the Albert Hall, though the soloists, placed behind the orchestra, fared less well.
Bruce Ford didn't sound quite right in the title role: he may be a stylish Mozart and Rossini singer, but his French diction is unconvincing and he sometimes sounded under heavy pressure. Christopher Maltman cut a dash as Fieramosca, but Franz Hawlata was a woolly Balducci. Laura Claycomb's elegant Teresa and Monica Groop's feisty Ascanio were far more impressive, but best of all was the Choir of MDR Leipzig, urged on by Norrington, attacking Berlioz's magnificently extravagant numbers with gusto.