Caroline Branchu at the zenith of her career

Hector Berlioz, in his correspondence and other writings, expressed his great admiration for the singer Caroline Branchu, who in 1810 took the part of Laméa in Les Bayadères. On his arrival as a young man in Paris in 1821 he heard her sing Hypermnestre in Antonio Salieri’s Les Danaïdes at the Salle Le Peletier (to which the Opéra had recently transferred) and shortly afterwards Clytemnestre in Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide. Caroline Branchu was then in her early forties and nearing the end of her career, gradually giving up the great roles, such as Julia in Spontini’s La Vestale (1807), that had established her fame. He nevertheless heard her again in the title role of Gluck’s Alceste (1825 revival, when the pitch was lowered to enable her to sing the part), as Valérie in Berton’s Virginie (1823), and as Ève in Rodolphe Kreutzer’s La Mort d’Abel (1823 revival, with Adolphe Nourrit as Abel), before she retired from the Paris Opéra in February 1826, following a triumphant final appearance as Statira, the widow of Alexander the Great, in Gaspare Spontini’s Olympie, after which she was crowned on stage by the great actor François-Joseph Talma to great acclaim from the audience. For Berlioz, Caroline Branchu was ‘tragédie lyrique incarnate’, with a style based on the highest French Classical operatic tradition inherited from Gluck. Her splendid voice, with a particularly rich middle register, a wide range of colours and dynamics, including an unforgettable extreme pianissimo, as well as her superb diction, sent him into raptures. She made a deep and lasting impression on him and may well have been in his mind when, in the late 1850s, he came to write the roles of Cassandre and Didon in his epic opera Les Troyens. He idolised Madame Branchu, and having found a means of being introduced to her, he cultivated her friendship.