It would be an interesting point to discover whether Shakespeare would have preferred this very "correct" { 97} musical setting to Mendelssohn's now derided one. I rather think that Mendelssohn's Overture and Scherzo would have appealed to him. There seems to me to be very little in this play, with its frequent classical allusions, that calls for folk-music, and artificial simplicity in a production of a play so full of Elizabethan artifice seems utterly out of place.
The most successful opera founded on _Much Ado About Nothing_ is +Berlioz's+ two-act work entitled _Béatrice et Bénédict_, produced at Baden, 1862. The composer wrote his own libretto for this, and it is an ingenious one. The first reference we get to the work is in a letter to his greatest friend, Humbert Ferrand, dated November 1858: "I am getting on with a one-act opera for Baden written round Shakespeare's _Much Ado About Nothing_. It is called _Béatrice et Bénédict_; I promise there shall not be 'much ado' in the shape of noise in it. Benayet, the King of Baden, wants it next year."
A very interesting point is made here in the little joke about "noise." Berlioz had long been accused by critics and public of using too large orchestras. He was very careful to put down in his scores the exact number of each instrument that he required, and the ignorant, non-musical person cannot understand that thirty violins playing _pianissimo_ are still _pianissimo_ and are infinitely more beautiful than sixteen or eight. Berlioz composed this work, "little opera" he calls it, immensely quickly, and complains that ideas come to him so fast that he has not time to write them down. In a letter to his sailor son, Louis, dated November 1860, he says: "You ask how I manage to crowd a Shakespeare's five acts into one. I have taken only one subject from the play--the part in which Beatrice and Benedick, who detest each other, are mutually persuaded of each other's love, whereby they are inspired with a true passion. The idea is really comic." I don't { 99} quite understand what he means by the last sentence: it is certainly a comedy idea, but not to me comic. Perhaps the translation of the original may be somewhat free: I have not the French original version by me, so I quote from the volume in Dent's "Everyman's Library."