KING LEAR
Very few composers have had the temerity to lay hands on King Lear. With the notable exception of Berlioz, no composer of the first rank seems to have touched it. At one time Verdi thought very seriously of making it the subject of an opera, and it is much to be regretted that the project was never carried out. With Boito as librettist, what a work Verdi might have turned out in his golden old age!
Berlioz began his Roi Lear overture at Nice while he was holding the Grand Prix de Rome, but was stopped by the King of Sardinia's police as a spy. The composer's habit of writing music without a piano did not please them at all; so he was sent for and interrogated by the chief of the secret police.
"You wander about with a book in your hands; are you making plans?"
"Yes, the plan of an overture to King Lear."
"Who is this King Lear?"
"A wretched old English king," etc.
"You cannot possibly compose wandering about the beach with only a pencil and paper and no piano; so tell me where you wish to go, and your passports shall be made out."
"Then I will go back to Rome, and, by your leave, continue to compose without a piano."
Berlioz finished the overture in May 1831, but it was years before it made any success, and it has never been popular in France.