Les Nuits d’été

A cycle of six songs for soprano or tenor with piano accompaniment, Les Nuits d’été – begun in 1835 – was published in Paris in 1841 and dedicated to the composer, Louise Bertin, daughter of the editor of the Journal des débats (to which Berlioz had contributed since 1835). The work was orchestrated later (1856): at the suggestion of a publisher, Berlioz saw to this task himself, taking the opportunity to alter the very nature of this song cycle. He dedicated each of the songs to a different performer: the six vocalists were “chamber” singers to the archduchy of Weimar – a city where, with Liszt as court conductor, some of Berlioz’s works had been premiered. Although Weimar had funds enough to put on the whole song cycle in its present form, this was not the case in the rest of Europe. By increasing the number of vocal tessituras needed to perform it correctly, Berlioz was – without doubt knowingly – condemning his cycle to be broken up and the numbers performed separately. There were probably good reasons for this move. Berlioz specialists have been surprised that Berlioz’s vast body of published texts does not contain a single line about the Nuits d’été, which is, however, regarded as one of his masterpieces. Written at a time when Berlioz was coping with his failed romance with Harriet Smithson, this song cycle symbolised a youthful blow that the aging composer might have preferred to forget. The modern re-orchestration of Nuits d’été for the work’s original vocal tessitura allows contemporary audiences to derive maximum enjoyment from the sublime sorrows of Romantic youth.