Prom 59 – Benvenuto Cellini

Part of the BBC Proms.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner brings his five-year series of Berlioz performances to a triumphant close, and this summer’s 150th-anniversary celebrations to a spectacular climax, with the composer’s rarely performed opera Benvenuto Cellini, based on the life and loves of the Renaissance sculptor – culminating in the forging of a vast masterwork. With its sprawling storytelling and vastly demanding score, this is a piece built for the scope of the Royal Albert Hall. American tenor Michael Spyres sings the title-role.