At the age of twenty-four, the ambitious Berlioz sketched out an opera revolving around the appearance of a blindfolded political prisoner brought before the feared judges of the German secret courts during the Middle Ages. Berlioz abandoned the opera but did complete an overture on the subject, strongly influenced by the theater music of Christoph Willibald Gluck.

Berlioz claimed to be inspired by a vision of "the fires of hell," and Satan himself could be presiding over the menacing trombone theme that dominates the overture after a tense introduction. After an extended, high-strung transition that emphasizes atmosphere over musical substance, an Allegro section ensues with rapid, quasi-fugal material for the strings. This gives way to an incongruously lilting, faintly Scottish tune for violins that Berlioz salvaged from an early unpublished quintet for flute and strings. Berlioz then develops all this material, with frequent threatening interjections from the low brass. Toward the end the lilting violin theme takes on a more heroic character, but it's the imposing trombone motif that dominates the frantic coda.



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