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There's no faulting the execution, but the former Python's take on Berlioz's dramatic legend is worryingly inconsistent in tone. 

The task sounded Herculean: turning Benvenuto Cellini, that reputedly difficult, flawed work by Berlioz, into an utterly entertaining show that renders justice to its youthfully energetic music. This is what Terry Gilliam manages to pull off... and it is nothing short of miraculous.

“He’s not an opera director. He’s a very naughty boy!” Three years after his surreal Damnation of Faust, Terry Gilliam tackles more Berlioz for English National Opera in the shape of Benvenuto Cellini, striking gold again.

When Hector Berlioz first read Gérard de Nerval's translation of Goethe's Faust, he was entranced: he could not put the book down and worked it into a suite entitled Eight Scenes from Faust. Nearly twenty years later, he came back to the material and expanded it into a larger work La Damnation de Faust, but he was perhaps uncertain as to exactly what it was he had created.

Nouvelle production du rare opéra de Berlioz, Benvenuto Cellini, à l'Opéra Bastille. Mise en scène spectaculaire de Terry Gilliam.

El Gran Teatre del Liceu presenta, ante una gran expectación, Benvenuto Cellini de la mano de Terry Gilliam. Tras una intensa campaña promocional, asistimos a un gran éxito de la temporada, con Josep Pons en la dirección musical y John Osborn y Kathryn Lewek en los roles principales.