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The following review appeared in the Chicago Tribune August 7, 1990. BERLIOZ EXCESSES AREN'T HALF BAD IN GRANT PARK
"Lelio" was assembled from six vocal pieces already in Berlioz's portfolio. Connecting these numbers is a narration spoken by the lovesick composer's alter ego, Lelio, awakened from the opium dream that had inspired the symphony's fantastic scenario. The rambling text is a thinly disguised marriage proposal to Berlioz's future wife, actress Harriet Smithson, in which, among other things, he defends his adored Shakespeare against critical carping. To call it contrived is to risk understatement. The vocal soloists were quite good. Glenn Siebert's honeyed, very French- sounding tenor coped splendidly with the high tessitura of his rapturous songs. "Song of the Brigands," typically Berliozan in its rhythmic swagger, was lustily sung by baritone Philip Kraus with the men of the Grant Park Symphony Chorus. The women's voices made a gravely beautiful effect in the Shades' chorus. The real hero of the occasion, however, was actor Werner Klemperer, who
managed to rivet one's attention to a windy and florid narration that,
in less considerate hands, could easily have induced ruinous laughter.
With his classically trained, skillfully modulated tones, he might
consider hitting the lecture circuit as a Berlioz impersonator. In all,
this was Grant Park at its adventuresome best. | ||||
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Every concertgoer knows Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique." However,
almost nobody is familiar with the work's sequel, ''Lelio, or The
Return to Life.'' The composer bracketed both works under the title
"Episode in the Life of an Artist" and expressed the desire (seldom,
if ever, respected) that the works should be performed as a totality
At the Petrillo Music Shell last weekend, conductor Zdenek Macal and
the Grant Park Symphony gave us the opportunity of hearing this
wonderfully bizarre conflation much as Berlioz must have envisioned it.
Though certainly no masterpiece (as the ''Symphonie Fantastique'' is),
"Lelio" proved a far more interesting score than its shabby
reputation had suggested.