Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), the celebrated French composer, often stayed on the Côte d’Azur, where one of his favourite haunts was the Hôtel de Paris in Monaco. Erected as a tribute to Hector Berlioz, this sculpture was officially unveiled on 7 March 1903 by Prince Albert I, in a ceremony attended b...
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), the celebrated French composer, often stayed on the Côte d’Azur, where one of his favourite haunts was the Hôtel de Paris in Monaco. Erected as a tribute to Hector Berlioz, this sculpture was officially unveiled on 7 March 1903 by Prince Albert I, in a ceremony attended by the artist’s family and numerous prominent public figures, musicians, composers, and politicians. The bust was made to celebrate the centenary of the composer’s birth. At the ceremony, Jules Massenet gave a speech on behalf of the Institut de France in praise of Berlioz. On the evening of the unveiling, a performance of La Damnation de Faust was given, ten years after the piece was first staged theatrically by Raoul Gunsbourg, director of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo. The sculptor Léopold Bernstamm took inspiration from a photograph owned by the Berlioz family, and from a handful of engravings. The bust sits on a small pedestal adorned with bas-reliefs representing characters from the “Damnation de Faust” by the sculptor Paul Roussel.
Léopold Bernhard Bernstamm was a German sculptor born on 20 April 1859 in Riga (Russia). After moving to Saint Petersburg with his father in 1872, he entered the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in 1874. He became famous in the early 1880s by creating some three hundred portraits of Russian and French personalities. He moved to Paris in 1885, joining the workshop of Antonin Mercié. His speed of execution and keen eye for physiognomy eventually saw him appointed the head sculptor at the Musée Grevin. Léopold Bernhard Bernstamm died on 22 January 1939 in Paris.
