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Stage play performed by Jill Freud and Company,
Southwold and Aldeburgh Summer Festival, 2006
ESTELLE’S PINK SHOES
[MUSIC CUE 1: UN BAL 1]
WOMAN
The story of Hector Berlioz’s love for Estelle Duboef begins at a country house owned by the composer’s grandfather at Meylan, which is three miles from Grenoble, near the border of Savoy. In his early years, Hector would go there, with his mother and sisters, to stay for three weeks at the end of every summer.
Above Meylan, close under the steep wall of the mountain, lies a little white villa, surrounded by vineyards and gardens.
Behind are some rocky hills, a crumbling old tower, some woods, and the huge, imposing mass of the great Saint-Eynard rock.
The villa belonged to Madame Gautier, who spent the summer there with her two nieces, the younger of whom was called Estelle.
MAN
She was eighteen, tall and elegant, with splendid, shining eyes, hair worthy to adorn the helmet of Achilles, and the feet of a thoroughbred Parisian – clad in a pair of pink shoes!… You may laugh, but I was twelve, and I had never seen a pair of pink shoes before. I cannot think of her now without recalling the glitter of her great eyes, and her equally brilliant pink shoes.
The moment I set eyes on her, I felt an electric shock; I fell in love with her, desperately, hopelessly. I had no wishes, no hopes, and I suffered acutely. I crept away like a wounded bird, and hid myself in the maize fields and the orchards. I was haunted by jealousy, and suffered tortures when any man approached my idol.’
WOMAN
The spectacle of so young a child, overwhelmed with a feeling for a girl who was almost a woman, afforded all the neighbours the keenest amusement. Estelle was the first to discern it, and she was more amused than anyone.
One evening, there was a large party, a game was proposed, and the guests were divided into two groups, the men to choose their companions.
MAN
I was purposely called up first, but I dared not choose, and stood motionless with downcast eyes and beating heart, while they all laughed at me. At last, Estelle took me by the hand and said:
WOMAN
Well then, I will choose. I take Monsieur Hector!
MAN
Alas! The cruel girl, in all her beauty, was laughing, as she stood looking down at me.
[MUSIC CUE 2: UN BAL 2]
WOMAN
The life of Hector Berlioz has attracted as much interest since his birth in 1803 as his music.
Forced for much of it to earn his living as a critic, his faultless judgment and loathing of mediocrity earned him many enemies among those with influence, and worked against his interests as a composer.
WOMAN
He would always live at a high level of emotion. Today, his mental state would attract the attention of the medical profession, but he simply referred his heightened feelings as ‘spleen’.
MAN
I first fell prey to a mental state caused by isolation when I was sixteen, and it came about in this way. One beautiful May morning, in the Cote-Saint-André, I was sitting in a meadow under the shade of some spreading oaks, reading a novel. Although absorbed in my book, I was conscious of a soft, sad air.
[MUSIC CUE 3: SHEPHERD’S LAMENT 1]
It was wafting over the plains at regular intervals and arose from the chanting of the litanies by the peasants.
There is something touching and poetical in this wandering through the hills and dales in the spring time to invoke God’s blessing on the fruits of the earth, and I was unspeakably affected by it. As the pious band drifted farther and farther away there was silence… the faint rustling of the wheat, stirred by the soft morning air… utter calm… the dull throbbing of my heart… Oh for wings across the space! I want life and love and burning kisses! But where is my Estelle?… Vanished … I cast myself down on the ground, groaned and clutched the earth wildly in my passionate struggles against loneliness and isolation.
Whenever I now become possessed by this feeling my skin begins to pain and burn. I want to call on my friends, and even strangers, to help me preserve the life which is being drawn out of me.
These crises are not accompanied by a longing for death – it is no wish to die – far from it, it is a yearning for life, fuller and more complete; I have an infinite capacity for happiness which I can never satisfy.
[MUSIC CUE 4: SHEPHERD’S LAMENT 2]
WOMAN
At the age of nineteen, under pressure from his doctor father, Berlioz went to Paris to read medicine. He studied reluctantly, and spent his evenings at concerts, and supplemented his allowance by playing in orchestras and singing in choirs. Before long, he announced to his father that he was giving up medicine to study music. Doctor Berlioz resigned himself to this fact, but Madame Berlioz was less compliant.
MAN
My mother held strong opinions with regard to all arts connected with the stage. She looked upon all –
WOMAN
– actors, actresses, singers, musicians, poets and composers as abominable creatures, predestined to eternal damnation.
MAN
So, when she got wind that I was planning to adopt a musical career, her whole soul was roused to anger. She was convinced that I was –
WOMAN
– pursuing a path that leads to discredit in this world and damnation in the next. Your father has been weak enough to allow you to return to Paris, and to encourage your wild, wicked plans; but I will not have this guilt on my soul.
MAN
Mother!
WOMAN
I beseech you not to persist in your folly, Hector! See; I, your mother, kneel to you, and beg you humbly to renounce it.
MAN
Good heavens, Mother; do not kneel to me! Rise, I entreat you!
WOMAN
How can you stand unmoved, with your mother kneeling at your feet? Well, then, go! Go and wallow in the filth of Paris, sully your name, and kill your father and me with sorrow and shame! You are my son no longer. I curse you!
MAN
It is almost incredible that such bigotry could lead to a scene like this between so tender a mother and so grateful and loving a son.
When the hour for my departure had arrived, my mother was reading under a tree. When she saw us, she rose and fled. I stood there crying. All in vain; I had to leave without bidding her goodbye, without a word or a look, and with her curse on my head.
[MUSIC CUE 5: MOTHER AND MUSIC]
WOMAN
During is time at the prestigious Paris Conservatoire, Berlioz rebelled against the traditional attitudes he encountered there.
MAN
However, he made good friends among the students, one of whom described him thus:
WOMAN
I do not think that anyone could have met Berlioz without being struck by the extraordinary expression of his face. The high forehead, overhanging thedeep-set eyes, the great curving hawk-nose, the thin, finely-cut lips and rather short chin, the enormous shock of light brown hair. The face was peculiarly animated, the eyes alternately brilliant and dull, the expression of the mouth varying from the friendliest of smiles to mocking laughter.
The 22-year-old prodigy, Felix Mendelssohn, in a letter to his father, was less charitable about him:
MAN
Berlioz is a freak, without a spark of talent, fumbling about in the darkness and imagining himself to be the creator of a new world; he writes the most horrible things,
[MUSIC CUE 6: ENFANCE – HORRIBLE]
and if he were not a Frenchman, with whom life is always agreeable, I could not endure him any longer.
[1831]
WOMAN
At the age of 28, while still studying in Paris, Berlioz began to give guitar lessons in a girls’ school, where a young woman named Mademoiselle Camille Moke taught the piano.
MAN
I soon threw myself, with all the ardour of youth, into a liaison with this young and exasperatingly beautiful girl of eighteen. I ran through the whole gamut of passion in my relationship with her.
WOMAN
However, at the Conservatoire, Berlioz won a coveted award for composition, which required him to go to Rome. He left Paris, with his passion for Camille Moke in full blaze. On his arrival, he waited anxiously for letters from Paris – none came. After three weeks of ever-increasing agitation, he set out to return home.
But on the way back he was detained for a week in Florence with a quinsy and a fever. When allowed out, he at once proceeded to the post office for his letters.
MAN
The packet that was handed to me contained a letter, the tenor of which was inconceivably painful to a man of my temperament. Camille’s mother, accusing me of having brought trouble into her family, announced her daughter’s marriage to a Monsieur Pleyel.
[MUSIC CUE 7: HAROLD – CAMILLE 1]
On the spot, I made up my mind what to do. My duty was clear. I must proceed to Paris, and kill the mother, the daughter and the unfortunate Monsieur Pleyel. After that, it would, of course, be incumbent on me to commit suicide.
I arranged all the details on the spot. Known in Paris as I was, my reappearance would be noticed… A complete disguise and the greatest precautions were therefore necessary.
[MUSIC CUE 8: HAROLD – CAMILLE 2]
WOMAN
He betook himself to a French modiste, where he ordered a costume such as would be worn by a lady’s maid – dress, hat, green veil, and so on to be ready by 5 o’clock – and returned to his hotel.
MAN
I pack a bag with some clothes. I have a pair of double-barrelled pistols, which I load carefully, and two bottles – one of laudanum and one of strychnine – which I put in my pocket. At five, I adjourn to my dressmaker’s and try on my costume, which fits to perfection. In paying for it, I put down twenty francs more than the price agreed; the girl at the desk tries to pintout my mistake, but is deterred by her mistress, who hastily sweeps the gold into a drawer.
WOMAN
Leave the gentlemen alone, you stupid girl. Don’t you see that he is too busy to listen to your chatter? A thousand thanks, sir; I wish you success. You will look your part to perfection.
WOMAN
The coach left at 6pm. However, when he arrived at Genoa, on examining his passport, the Sardininan police took it into their heads that he was a carbonaro –
MAN
– or heaven knows what –
WOMAN
– and refused a visa for Turin. They advised him to travel via Nice instead.
[MUSIC CUE 9: HAROLD – CAMILLE 3]
Still in a rage and still with fever, he set out for Nice, rehearsing on the way every point of the little drama that he intended to perform in Paris.
MAN
I would go to my ‘friends’’ house at about nine o’clock in the evening, when the family would be assembled for tea, and send in to say that a maid is waiting with an urgent message for Camille’s mother; I am shown into the drawing room; I hand over a letter, and, while it is being read, produce my pistol and blow out the brains, first of the mother, then of the unfortunate Monsieur Pleyel; and, seizing the treacherous Camille by the hair, throw off my disguise and finish her off in the same manner. Then I will hasten to deposit the contents of the remaining barrel into my right temple; and if the pistol misfires, I shall at once resort to my small bottles.
And yet, in spite of my wrath, I cannot help feeling sorry that my plans, excellent as they otherwise are, involve my own suicide. It seems hard to bid farewell to life and art, to leave my unfinished symphony, and all the other greater works which are seething in my brain to go down to posterity merely as a failed composer.
WOMAN
It was now night, and Hector and the coachman were travelling along the Corniche road overhanging the sea. For more than an hour he indulged in bright dreams of what the future might have had in store for him and then,as his fever abated, his mood changed and he abandoned his plan.
What a charming play! It is really a great pity that it was never put on the stage…
[MUSIC CUE 10: DAMNATION – NICE]
MAN
In the sunny, balmy air of Nice, life and joy returned to me, and I dreamt of music and the future, I spend a whole month in Nice wandering in groves of orange trees, bathing in the sea, sleeping on the heather on the Villefranche hills, and looking down from those glorious heights on the silent coming and going of the distant ships. These were the three happiest weeks of my life.
[1827]
WOMAN
Berlioz’s most famous work, the Symphonie Fantastique was inspired by his delirious obsession with an Irish actress, Harriet Smithson, whom he had first seen playing Juliet with a visiting English theatre company in Paris.
MAN
The symphony, written in the form of a story, is intense, colourful and dramatic. In an opium-induced dream, the composer murders his beloved, is condemned, is led away to the scaffold and witnesses his own execution.
[MUSIC CUE 11: HARRIET]
WOMAN
Berlioz’s life is, of course, indelibly associated with his relationship with Harriet, whom he finally married. But the great passion for Estelle that had entered his heart when he was twelve years old still remained there.
[1833]
[MUSIC CUE 12: HAROLD 1]
MAN
I was thirty when I next caught sight of St Eynard in the distance, the little white villa and the old tower, through a mist of tears… I still loved Estelle… I had heard that she was married, I did not know to whom… and even that did not cure me.
My mother – with whom I was now reconciled – liked to tease me about my childish love, and one day played an unkind trick on me. A few days after my return from Rome, she handed me a letter.
