Berlioz's Prix de Rome tribulations compose one of the great archetypal tales of genius at the mercy of routine, rule-of-thumb, and slick professionalism. He was eliminated in the first round of the competition in 1826 because his preliminary fugue failed to pass muster. A measure of perspective is gained by recalling that his impressive, if yeasty, Messe solenelle (with its Resurrexit foreshadowing the Tuba mirum of the Requiem two decades later) had been successfully performed the year before, and that almost immediately after his exclusion from the 1826 competition he would compose the overture to Les Francs-juges - a work which still figures in concert programs. In 1827 he was allowed to go en loge for the composition of a cantata upon ritual, pseudo-operatic verses, though the exquisite orchestral effects which he lavished upon the mediocre text of La Mort d'Orphée were declared "unplayable," at least upon the piano, the instrument of trial. 1828 brought forth the cantata Herminie in which Berlioz again responded to the poetry - rather than the text - of the subject matter, and departed from a demanded agitato passage by composing a delicate prayer which delighted unprejudiced hearers as it offended his judges. Having proven his mettle and been awarded Second Prize, Berlioz assumed that the First Prize would surely be his in 1829. But the cantata text, Cléopâtre, called up intimations of grandeur and reminiscences of Shakespeare to which he gave rich, startling expression. No prize was awarded that year. Chastened and determined to triumph, Berlioz went en loge for the fourth time in 1830 with the Byron-inspired text of La Mort de Sardanaple, whose subject - the besieged Assyrian king Sardanapalus perishing in flames with his treasures, concubines, and slaves - had been wrought to glowing realization in the great canvas by Eugène Delacroix (1798 - 1863) in 1828. Cunning now, Berlioz set the text in formulaic fashion, though the music is certainly not devoid of poetic touches, some of which turn up again in Roméo et Juliette (1839), L'Impériale (1854), and Les Troyens (1858). But after his demonstration of craft - rather than genius - had achieved the desired effect and the Prix de Rome was, at long last, his, Berlioz added to La Mort de Sardanaple an incendie, or "conflagration," in which the flamboyance he had been compelled to deny was given rein. Unfortunately, the latter devolved into chaos because of a missed cue at its rehearsal performance, 30 October 1830. But Sardanaple was heard, at length, including the incendie, at the epochal concert of 5 December 1830, where it shared the program with the première of the Symphonie fantastique and was applauded by no less than Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791 - 1864) - on his way to triumph at the Paris Opéra with Robert le diable (1831) - and Berlioz's admired mentor, Gasparo Spontini (1774 - 1851), composer of La Vestale. In his Memoirs, Berlioz claims to have destroyed La Mort de Sardanaple, though some 197 bars are extant, comprising the final scene - Sardanapalus's third aria - and the incendie.

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