From Director to Composer

Beatrice and Benedict director Robin Tebutt pens his thoughts in a letter to the composer.

M. Hector Berlioz
Prix de Rome,
Officier de la légion d'honneur
October 2008

Dear Hector,
So...we’re about to start work on your Beatrice and Benedict – the first time it has been staged here in Houston. I’d like to run some ideas by you, since putting pen to paper helps focus the mind on what we should aim for when we get on our feet in the rehearsal room.
    First, let me tell you what a pleasure it is to listen to your sparkling, joyous music. I see from your Memoirs that you yourself think of it as one of your liveliest and most original compositions. You’ve written this piece in your old age, yet it is full of youthful exuberance, and it is disarmingly simple in structure. You have taken Shakespeare’s tragicomedy Much Ado About Nothing and simplified it by completely cutting one of the characters (the villainous Don John) and the conspiracy to sabotage the wedding of Hero and Claudio. You have, essentially, written the opera of the play’s sub-plot: Much Ado About Even Less!! You’ve chosen to throw the emphasis onto Beatrice and Benedict, the couple whose hearts are their own to discover (for themselves and for each other) without the twists and turns of fate or the to-do of romantic convention.

     There are those, I’ve heard it said, who think that the piece has its problems when it comes to putting it on the stage. Perhaps this comes from trying to look for a drama that isn’t there and misses the point of your re-working of the story. Absence of complication has a sophistication of its own. I like your description of the opera being “a caprice written with the point of a needle.” For all the musical and verbal wit, the characters’ teasing and sparring and their giddy love, there are touches of tender melancholy to capture. We’ll approach our task as we might in the kitchen when we want to make the perfect sauce for pasta  let’s say, alla puttanesca  simple and fresh ingredients, a good dash of wine, a little (not too much) seasoning, and it mustn’t be over-cooked!

    I hope you don’t mind, but we’ve decided to do it in English so that we can catch all the wit in our own language. You’ve written in the traditional form of the opéra-comique, so there is spoken dialogue between the musical numbers. I see from your letters that you had problems with this convention yourself, back when you first did it in Baden-Baden, and that you urged your singers to “speak like human beings.” Thanks – that’s a good pointer for us! We’ve also decided to use bits of Shakespeare’s original text (rather than translate back from your French version), and we might take occasional liberty with what Somarone has to say. After all, he’s not in Shakespeare’s play  you made him up!

    You have a tendency, dear Hector, to play around with the way time passes: sometimes it ticks along, sometimes it stands still, sometimes it jumps ahead. We’ll look at that in the way one might edit a film and we’ll give the setting a film-like naturalism, with a real atmosphere of your beloved Italy. I’m going to ask HGO if they’ll pay for a trip for us all to go to Sicily for essential research!

    Beatrice and Benedict is your last piece and it is a delight. You said yourself that it brings a smile to the eye and to the lips. What a fascinating, passionate life you’ve led, my dear Hector. Let’s get everyone here to meet you; we’ll make that big bowl of pasta and let’s open a bottle (or two) of that delicious, sweet Marsala wine.

Cheers!
Robin