page_title: Cirque d'Été
section_title: Berlioz concerts
hierarchical_section_title: Cirque d'Été / Berlioz concerts
caption_attribution_description: English: "Concert given by M. Berlioz in the hall of the Cirque Olympique, on the Champs-Élysées" (L'Illustration, 25 January 1845)
context_page_description: The Cirque d'Été, a former Parisian equestrian theatre, was built in 1841 to designs by the architect Jacques Hittorff. It was used as the summer home of the Théâtre Franconi, the equestrian troupe of the Cirque Olympique, the license for which had been sold in 1836 to Louis Dejean by Adolphe Franconi, the grandson of its founder, Antonio Franconi. The cirque was later also used for other purposes, including grand concerts conducted by Hector Berlioz.
  The new theatre was located on the north-east side of the present Rond-Point of the Champs-Élysées. At first called the Cirque National, it also became known as the Cirque des Champs-Élysées and the Cirque Olympique des Champs-Élysées. In 1853 it was renamed Cirque de l'Impératrice, a name which it retained until the fall of the empire in 1870.
  The cirque on the Champs-Élysées should not be confused with the same company's winter theatre, the Cirque Olympique on the Boulevard du Temple, which had opened in 1827, or with the company's later winter theatre, the Cirque Napoléon, also built for Louis Dejean and opened in 1852. The latter theatre dropped the name Cirque Napoléon in 1870 and became primarily known as the Cirque d'Hiver.
context_section_description: The director of the theatre, a man by the name of Gallois, soon installed heating, and, being aware of the great success of the monster concert presented by Hector Berlioz at the nearby Festival de l'Industrie during the summer of 1844, engaged the composer for a series of six grand concerts to be presented at the Cirque that winter on Sunday afternoons, a day when no competing ones would be given at the Paris Conservatoire. The contract stipulated that Berlioz would hire and rehearse the orchestra and chorus, select the music, and conduct the performances. Berlioz engaged 350 players and singers for the concerts and held sectional rehearsals at the Salle Herz. Fortunately, Gallois underwrote all the costs.
  The first concert on 19 January 1845 included Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto with Charles Hallé as the piano soloist, excerpts from Gluck's operas Alceste and Orphée, as well as works by Berlioz, including the overture Le carnaval romain, La tour de Nice (the original version of the overture Le corsaire), and the "Dies irae" and "Tuba mirum" from his requiem mass, the Grande Messe des morts. The latter two excerpts were played at the conclusion of all the concerts.
  The second concert on 16 February had the theme séance orientale, in keeping with the decoration of the hall. The program included Félicien David's symphonic ode Le désert, the Austrian "lion-pianist" Léopold de Meyer playing his Marche marocaine, Op. 22 (subtitled "War-song of the Turks"), and Berlioz's overture to Les francs-juges. Apparently, Meyer's Marche "electrified the audience, and was furiously encored."
  The third concert on 16 March was organized around the theme séance russe. There was music by the Russian composer Mikhail Glinka, who was in Paris at the time and attended the concerts, which included excerpts from his opera A Life for the Tsar and a ballet from his opera Russlan and Ludmilla. The finale from Berlioz's dramatic symphony Roméo et Juliette had a Russian bass singing the role of Friar Laurence. The concert also included L'invitation à la valse, Berlioz's orchestration of Carl Maria von Weber's piano piece Invitation to the Dance (which Berlioz had inserted as part of the ballet in his edition of Weber's opera Der Freischütz prepared for a production at the Paris Opera in 1841). Apparently Glinka was quite pleased with the music he heard by Berlioz: he soon departed on a trip to Spain planning to compose fantaisies pittoresque in the style of Berlioz.
  The fourth program on 6 April was billed as a séance Berlioz and included the overture from Weber's Freischütz, excerpts from Berlioz's symphonies Harold en Italie and Roméo et Juliette, and Quasimodo's aria with chorus from Louise Bertin's opera La Esmeralda sung by the tenor Jean-Étienne-Auguste Massol, who had created the role at the Paris Opera in 1836. (At the premiere the aria had made such a good impression that Alexandre Dumas had cried out "It's by Berlioz! It's by Berlioz!". Berlioz denied that he had written any of the music, and only suggested an improvement to its ending.) The concert also included the first performance of Berlioz's orchestration of Meyer's Marche marocaine.
  Although the first two concerts at the Cirque were well attended, the numbers quickly declined and the series closed after the fourth concert. The location, not a popular spot in the wintertime, was probably partly to blame, as were the acoustics of the hall, which was too reverberant. In addition, the ticket prices of 5 francs for the upper level and  10 francs for the lower were significantly higher than the 1 and 2 francs typically charged for an equestrian show.
  Berlioz was later to write in his memoirs:
  "I do not remember what terms we agreed on; I know only that it turned out badly for him [Gallois]. The takings of the four concerts, for which we had engaged five hundred performers, were inevitably insufficient to cover all the cost of such huge forces. Once again the place was quite unsuitable for music. This time the sound reverberated so slowly in that heart-breaking rotunda that compositions o
caption: Berlioz conducting a grand concert at the Cirque Olympiqe on the Champs-Élysées (January 1845)
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