Benvenuto Cellini is an opera semiseria in four tableaux (spread across two or three acts[1]) by Hector Berlioz, his first full-length work for the stage.

Berlioz wrote this in his Mémoires about the background to the opera: I had been greatly struck by certain episodes in the life of Benvenuto Cellini.

I had the misfortune to believe they would make an interesting and dramatic subject for an opera, and I asked Léon de Wailly and Auguste Barbier … to write a libretto around them.

[6] The only plot element drawn directly from Cellini's memoirs concerns the casting of his famous statue of Perseus with the Head of Medusa for Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, although this was done in Florence, where it still stands in the Loggia dei Lanzi, not in Rome, as the opera has it.

All the opera's characters besides Cellini and Pope Clement VII, who is made commissioner of the statue in place of Cosimo, and all other episodes, are invented.

Several Berlioz scholars say it was completed that same year before the composer turned his attention to his massive Grande messe des morts in 1837.

In any event, its premiere was scheduled for June 1838, postponed, and finally given at the Opéra on 10 September 1838, conducted by François Habeneck and with Gilbert Duprez in the title role.

At the premiere, with costumes by Paul Lormier and sets by René-Humanité Philastre and Charles-Antoine Cambon, the audience hissed most of the music after the first few numbers.

[10] In 1996 a critical edition of the opera by Hugh Macdonald was published by Bärenreiter Verlag as part of the New Berlioz Edition,[11] taking into account all three versions because the composer himself was involved in all three: After Berlioz's death occasional performances took place — in Hanover in 1879, Vienna in 1911, and as part of the inaugural season at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, for six performances from 31 March 1913 conducted by Felix Weingartner.

[12] Following Les Troyens in 1935, the Glasgow Grand Opera Society mounted Benvenuto Cellini the next year alongside a production of Béatrice et Bénédict; Erik Chisholm conducted.

Four years later the Carl Rosa Opera Company, a British touring entity, brought it into its repertoire, giving two performances to packed houses at London's Sadler's Wells Theatre in 1957; the title role was sung by Charles Craig, then at the start of his career.

[14] Conductor Antal Doráti led the work in London in 1963 with Richard Lewis and Joan Carlyle, and again a recording was made.

After the first studio recording was made in July 1972, by Philips in Brent Town Hall, London, using an early two-act edition, interest in the opera grew.

The first American production came in 1975 from the Opera Company of Boston under the musical direction of Sarah Caldwell, with Jon Vickers in the title role and John Reardon as Fieramosca.

[16] Those New York performances, eight of them, were the first at the Metropolitan Opera, with James Levine conducting an Andrei Șerban staging and Marcello Giordani as Cellini.

[20] Mark Elder led a staging in Amsterdam the next year, which was also filmed; John Osborn sang Cellini.

Most recently a 2019 production in the Château de Versailles conducted by John Eliot Gardiner has been released on DVD, with Spyres as the sculptor.

[23] Balducci has been summoned to a meeting with Pope Clement VII concerning the commission of a bronze statue of Perseus from the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini.

He and his assistant Ascanio will be disguised as monks, and will take her from her father during the Mardi Gras celebrations, when the Castel Sant'Angelo cannon is sounded to mark the end of Carnival.

The amount of money in the advance is less than expected, which gives new impetus to the plan to mock Balducci at Cassandro's booth that night.

Balducci and Teresa enter, soon after Cellini and Ascanio dressed as monks, and then Fieramosca and Pompeo similarly disguised.

In a sudden act he orders all works from his studio, of whatever metal, to be smelted and reused for the Perseus, much to the consternation of Francesco and Bernardino.