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I am getting on with a one-act opera for Baden written round Shakespeare's _Much Ado About Nothing_. It is called _Béatrice et Bénédict_; I promise there shall not be 'much ado' in the shape of noise in it. Benayet, the King of Baden, wants it next year.
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Berlioz had long been accused by critics and public of using too large orchestras. He was very careful to put down in his scores the exact number of each instrument that he required, and the ignorant, non-musical person cannot understand that thirty violins playing _pianissimo_ are still _pianissimo_ and are infinitely more beautiful than sixteen or eight. Berlioz composed this work,
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he calls it, immensely quickly, and complains that ideas come to him so fast that he has not time to write them down. In a letter to his sailor son, Louis, dated November 1860, he says:
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You ask how I manage to crowd a Shakespeare's five acts into one. I have taken only one subject from the play--the part in which Beatrice and Benedick, who detest each other, are mutually persuaded of each other's love, whereby they are inspired with a true passion. The idea is really comic. I don't {99} quite understand what he means by the last sentence: it is certainly a comedy idea, but not to me comic. Perhaps the translation of the original may be somewhat free: I have not the French original version by me, so I quote from the volume in Dent's
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Everyman's Library.
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; and to his friend H. Ferrand:
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I am just home from Baden, where _Beatrice_ is a real triumph. He speaks of his
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He says:
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People are finding out that I have melody; that I can be gay--in fact, really comic; that I am not noisy. Benayet, whom Berlioz humorously calls
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King of Baden,