Berlioz reached the final stage of the Prix de Rome four times, eventually winning it in 1830 with La mort de Sardanapale. That is mostly lost (so far, anyway), but the other three cantatas survive, and two of them are recorded here. They are marvellously precocious pieces, too much so for the startled judges, and fascinating to hear now in the light of greater achievements. Herminie is a scena of frustrated love, and begins with a version of Berlioz's most familiar melody as the heroine broods on her hopeless passion. However, there are only repeated and regular outlines of the opening of what was, in the Symphonie fantastique, to become the long, hauntingly irregular idee fixe, although it is already well suited to Herminie's welling emotions and though it returns twice as a reference to them. The music has its conventional stretches, but the end is superb, as Herminie arms herself and rushes off to join Tancred on the field of battle: the music of her Priere (Berlioz was rightly proud enough of this to re-use it as a Chant sacre in the following year) returns under the galloping rhythms that slowly fade into the distance.
La mort de Cleopatre is also full of gestures later to be more sharply realized, and even of direct anticipations: for instance, the reprise of ''Ah! qu'il sont loin ces jours'' contains (at 3'56'' of track 3) a sequential figure that was to turn up in Benvenuto Cellini's aria to Teresa at ''si loin de vous, triste et bannie'', while the scene in which she invokes the shades of the Pharaohs was repeated in Lelio. This is the finer work, well worth revival not least for Berlioz's astonishing harmonic boldness at the moment of Cleopatra's death, when the asp strikes and her mind blurs as her life throbs into oblivion.
Rosalind Plowright sings both works with a fine heroic passion, phrasing boldly and freely; but her words are in many places all but inaudible. This is in part the fault of an acoustic that does not flatter her and sometimes allows the orchestra to obscure her. Fortunately texts are provided although both the German and especially English translations are so free as almost to constitute new versions. Jean-Philippe Rouchon accompanies sympathetically; he is less successful at characterizing the two overtures. No matter: reservations are of small importance beside the interest of this record.'