John Nelson’s destiny as a Berlioz conductor par excellence became clear in 1972, when he took charge of America’s first-ever complete performance of Les Troyens. “There’s nobody who sounds like Berlioz,” he has said, “He had an individual, original voice … audacity, originality and white-heat intensity.” This recording of the composer’s dazzling biographical opera Benvenuto Cellini was made in Paris and stars Gregory Kunde as the Renaissance goldsmith and sculptor, with Patrizia Ciofi as his beloved Teresa and, in the travesti role of his apprentice Ascanio, Joyce DiDonato.
