Though “Benvenuto Cellini” (1838) was Berlioz’s first opera, premiering five years before Wagner’s “Der fliegende Holländer” (1843), thirteen years before Verdi’s “Rigoletto” (1851), and two decades before Gounod’s “Faust” (1859), the work sounds positively avant-garde compared to contemporaneous works and even compared to those written long after it. The most astounding innovation was Berlioz’s use of syncopation, especially in his {…}