King Herod is definitely the bad guy of the Christmas Story. His vindictive order to kill all baby boys in the region echoes eerily back to the Old Testament account of Pharoah’s order that sent baby Moses down the river in a reed basket. Anyone who thinks the Bible is boring must not have read it—at least not stories like these!

So, while we agree that Herod was a villain, he offers the kind of character that gets the juices going for a creative artist.

The cruelty of King Herod’s deed is highly touted. Less attention is paid to deciphering his paranoid psychology. Yet this is precisely the aspect that fascinated French composer Hector Berlioz when he wrote his unique oratorio L’Enfance du Christ (The Childhood of Christ, 1854).

Oratorios are the lesser-known sisters of opera, invented at approximately the same time as opera around 1600. Oratorio’s nascent period is connected to the populist Counter-Reformation reforms devised during the Council of Trent (1545-1563). But later the oratorio began to flourish on its own, spreading across Europe as satisfying sacred dramas (sans costumes, acting, and staging), perfect for fasting times when theaters were shut tight. Ultimately the sacred oratorio branched out to portray secular subjects. And while not always a primary focus of composers, oratorios continued to be quite popular well into the 20th century.

L’Enfance du Christ ranks as the most important French oratorio of the 19th century. Some would even say it is the most impressive of all oratorios written during that period. Berlioz was a fascinating figure. Educated to enter the field of medicine, his musical training came late and without systematic rigor. His first mastery of an instrument, the flute, dates from his early teens and opened up a love for orchestral sounds.

Few composers ever showed the kind of vivid imagination Berlioz regularly employed to frame his compositions. Raised with classic literature, he developed a life-long love of serious drama including the works of Goethe and Shakespeare. But this oratorio about Christ’s Nativity began with one of music history’s greatest tricks.

Revising an organ works called L’adieu des bergers à la Sainte Familie (Farewell of the Shepherds to the Holy Family) into a piece for chorus, Berlioz programmed it, with its deliberately “antique” sound, as a newly rediscovered work from the 17th century! He even gave it a convincing archival title, attributed it to a fictitious composer “Ducré,” and dated it 1679.

The joke worked. The audience was enthralled and the “hoax” (to quote oratorio-specialist Howard Smither) stood for another two years. Thereafter, Berlioz was persuaded to turn the scene into a full-scale oratorio. His musical hoax became Part II. He added a Part III  L’arrivé à Saïs (Arrival at Saïs) based on freely invented events surrounding the Holy Family’s difficult travels and their arrival to Saïs. There, after scrounging around for shelter and food, they are befriended by a sympathetic Ishmaelite family. The Holy Family’s newly found domestic safety is celebrated by the host family’s children playing an utterly charming interlude for two flutes and harp. The oratorio ends with a chorus that encourages us to “conquer our pride” as we contemplate the mystery of Christ’s birth.

But what of the material he needed for Part I?  Here Berlioz followed the narrative from Matthew and focused on the personage of King Herod. Employing the oldest feature of oratorio form, Berlioz cast a strong role for an anonymous Narrator (tenor). Then Roman soldiers sing a brief exchange that sounds surprisingly modern: after all, soldiers bored in their duties and suspicious of their overlords tend to say the same things. Here, the soldiers question the mental balance of Herod which is easy to understand considering the violent orders he issues.

Then, we meet Herod. But after presenting him as a man of power and anger (Toujours ce rêve!, 12:45 below), Berlioz writes a moving aria that highlights Herod’s doubts and anxieties (13:52):

Ô misère des Rois! Régner et ne pas vivre! À tous donner des lois, Et désirer de suivre Le chevrier au fond des bois!

Oh the misery of being a king! We rule, but never live. We give law to all And yet wish we could follow The goatherd down to the bottom of the woods.

Berlioz weaves his sympathetic musical portrait using a short, sad, descending musical phrase that passes through viola and cello, and then finds its home in the woodwinds.

Of course we do not keep this sympathetic portrait of Herod. The music shifts, and we are plunged back into the sinister side of Herod. He consults his sages as to the truth about a dream regarding the birth of a child who will threaten his rule. His dream confirmed, the fateful order is given (28:32).

Berlioz, a master of dramatic contrast, continued to shift the mood and we find ourselves at the Manger. There, woodwind instruments create images of the pastoral, even imitating the sounds of the lambs bleating. Yet amid all of this beauty, the shadow created by Herod’s complex characterization never leaves our thoughts.

In today’s culture, dramas presented on stage and in films revel in the dark and destructive. But Berlioz lived in an era when the moral values of society were not yet turned upside down. Dark subjects still were surrounded by a context of moral clarity. Thus Herod’s musings of fear, confusion, and violence had plenty of dramatic space in which to create a touch of sympathy.

In addition, Berlioz’s decision to cast Herod as a man driven to horrific decisions by forces beyond his control fits perfectly with the Romantic era’s psychologically intense approach to drama. It also revives the kind of ambiguity and depth Shakespeare gave his tragic figures.

Explore Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ if you can. The work, unique in so many respects, urges us to step away from the soft images of the traditional Christmas card and hear a fresh account of the biblical narrative. Students of French will enjoy the supertitles presented in the version suggested here. Coming to know this work may lead children to explore the sophisticated manner in which Berlioz portrayed in music such classic stories as Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Benedict or the characters they know from Virgil like Aeneas, Dido, and the Carthaginians in his massive opera Les Troyens.