Berlioz’s long-anticipated first major trip to Germany—he left Paris on 12 December 1842 and traveled by way of Belgium—did not begin auspiciously. After fruitless attempts in Brussels, Mainz, and Frankfurt, he finally succeeded in giving concerts in Stuttgart on 29 December 1842, and in Hechingen on 2 January 1843. When he returned to Stuttgart on 3 January, he received a muchawaited letter from his friend Johann Christian Lobe inviting him to come to Weimar. Abandoning or postponing plans to visit Munich, Vienna, and Berlin, Berlioz replied to Lobe on the 6th: “I am leaving tomorrow, Saturday, the 7th, for Karlsruhe, where I hope to give a concert while passing through [on my way to Weimar, via Frankfurt].” The next day he set out for Karlsruhe—eighty kilometers from Stuttgart—with his traveling companion, Marie Récio. Presenting some specific dates and other little-known details concerning the beginning of Berlioz’s Weimar-bound odyssey—which consisted of one day in Karlsruhe and five days in Mannheim—is the primary purpose of this brief study.

To Mannheim

Karlsruhe, with its approximately twenty-three thousand inhabitants, was the capital of the Grand Duchy of Baden, and boasted an excellent orchestra of eight first and eight second violins, four violas, three cellos, and four basses, all under the direction of Kapellmeister Joseph Strauss. Strauss informed Berlioz that he would not be able to give a concert in Karlsruhe for another eight to ten days because of the prior engagement of “un flûtiste piémontais,” as Berlioz has it in chapter [LI-3] of the Mémoires and as most subsequent biographers have repeated.

We learn more from the Karlsruhe correspondent of the Mannheimer Journal, who expresses his regret that Berlioz, “who in France is considered the equal of Beethoven,” would be unable to give a concert because the stage was at the moment occupied by the Italian flute virtuoso Giulio Briccialdi, “the Paganini of the flute,” and would soon be occupied by the Italian violin virtuoso Antonio Bazzini, whose performance had already been announced for the 14th. Berlioz, “plein de respect pour la grande flûte”—“full of wholesome respect for the great man and his flute,” as David Cairns renders Berlioz’s play on words—but unwilling to wait, decided then to try his luck in Mannheim.