Evenings with the Orchestra

Evenings with the Orchestra by Berlioz, Hector. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780226043746.

During the performances of fashionable operas in an unidentified but "civilized" town in northern Europe, the musicians (with the exception of the conscientious bass drummer) tell tales, read stories, and exchange gossip to relieve the tedium of the bad music they are paid to perform. In this delightful and now classic narrative written by the brilliant composer and critic Hector Berlioz, we are privy to twenty-five highly entertaining evenings with a fascinating group of distracted performers. As we near the two-hundredth anniversary of Berliozs birth, Jacques Barzuns pitch-perfect translation of Evenings with the Orchestra ―with a new foreword by Berlioz scholar Peter Bloom―testifies to the enduring pleasure found in this most witty and amusing book.