Very few composers have had the temerity to lay hands on _King Lear_.
With the notable exception of Berlioz, no composer of the first rank
seems to have touched it. At one time Verdi thought very seriously of
making it the subject of an opera, and it is much to be regretted that
the project was never carried out. With Boito as librettist, what a
work Verdi might have turned out in his golden old age!
+Berlioz+ began his _Roi Lear_ overture at Nice while he was holding
the Grand Prix de Rome, but was stopped by the King of Sardinia's
police as a spy. The composer's habit of writing music without a piano
did not please them at all; so he was sent for and interrogated by the
chief of the secret police.
"You wander about with a book in your hands; are you making plans?"
"Yes, the plan of an overture to _King Lear_."
"Who is this King Lear?"
"A wretched old English king," etc.
"You cannot possibly compose wandering about the beach with only a
pencil and paper and no piano; so tell me where you wish to go, and
your passports shall be made out."
"Then I will go back to Rome, and, by your leave, continue to compose
without a piano."
Berlioz finished the overture in May 1831, but it was years before it
made any success, and it has never been popular in France.
Some years afterwards Berlioz was invited to conduct a {51} concert of
his works at Loewenberg for the Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen. At
the rehearsal the orchestra played the score "with such spirit,
smoothness, and precision that I said to myself in amazement, not
having heard the piece for ten or twelve years, 'It is tremendous; can
I really have written it?'" I am quoting from Berlioz's autobiography.
The overture begins _andante_ with a bold theme for basses, and the
whole of the opening is composed in a much more simple manner than one
is accustomed to expect from Berlioz. A beautiful cantabile theme soon
appears on the oboe, the opening is repeated _fortissimo_, and then
comes the real Berlioz. This episode is fiery and _agitato_, leading
on to the beautiful Cordelia music. The rest of the work is very long
and complicated, but no new melodies are introduced. There are no
labels; each hearer must read his own meaning into it; but by keeping
the idea of Lear in one's mind it is not difficult to get a very shrewd
notion of what the composer is driving at.
+Konradin Kreutzer+ composed an opera on this tragedy entitled
_Cordelia_. It is in one act, the libretto by P. Wolff. It was first
produced at Donaueschingen in 1819. The composer was born at Baden in
1780, and was a prolific writer. The only number I can find is the
overture, which is an ordinary straightforward composition, that
suggests Cordelia just as much as it would Julius Caesar or Charlie
Chaplin; I cannot understand why such music should ever be written.