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Autograph musical sketchleaf by Hector Berlioz for his opera Benvenuto Cellini, unsigned, one page, 10.5 x 6.75, no date. Berlioz pens seven measures in black ink on one side of an oblong folio leaf, comprising a first draft of a polyphonic theme, with several notes crossed out and a final passage rewritten. Identified in contemporary manuscript in German at the head: “Handschrift von Hector Berlioz Erste Skizze. (Benvenuto Cellini).” In very good to fine condition, with light creasing and soiling, and a stain to the bottom edge. The present manuscript is not recorded in Holoman.
Benvenuto Cellini, Berlioz’s opéra semi-seria based on the memoirs of the great Renaissance goldsmith and sculptor, premiered at the Paris Opéra on September 10, 1838, and was later revised for productions at Weimar in 1852. Set in 16th-century Rome under Pope Clement VII, the opera reflects Berlioz at his most vivid and extravagant: a dramatic fusion of idealism and farce, grandeur and wit, restless invention and brilliant orchestral color. Berlioz himself later observed that Benvenuto Cellini contained 'a variety of ideas, an energy and exuberance and a brilliance of colour such as I may perhaps never find again.'
An exceptionally rare working manuscript from one of Berlioz’s most ambitious stage works. While musical quotations in Berlioz’s hand appear with some frequency, true sketchleaves—revealing the composer’s process through revisions, cancellations, and rewritten passages—are of much greater rarity; the consignor notes only one comparable example traced at auction in over 30 years. A remarkable glimpse into Berlioz’s creative workshop, related to the opera in which he poured forth some of his boldest theatrical imagination.
