Cellini, Berlioz, Dumas and the Foundry

One episode from the life of Cellini appears to have struck both Berlioz and Dumas, to the point that they took special pains to include the scene in the opera Benvenuto Cellini and the novel Ascanio (also known as L'Orfèvre du roi). The scene in question involves the casting of the Perseus and the problems that entailed. For the purposes of their stories both Dumas and Berlioz change the location of the action: Rome for the opera and Paris for the novel, instead of the original Florence. Moreover, neither Dumas nor Berlioz seems to have understood the precise problem of metallurgy with which Cellini was dealing. (RS)