The crazy story of the Symphonie fantastique

“A young musician of morbid sensitivity and ardent imagination poisons himself with opium in a moment of despair caused by frustrated love,” wrote the ever-passionate composer Hector Berlioz in his detailed program notes for a work that would stun Parisian audiences at its 1830 premiere. It has thrilled concertgoers ever since. It all began when a touring English Shakespeare company performed Hamlet at the Paris Odéon, on September 11, 1827. Berlioz instantly fell in love with the Irish actress portraying Ophelia, Harriet Smithson. His attempts to confess his longing for her were rebuffed, inspiring the creation of his first major orchestral work. It wasn’t until Smithson was coaxed into attending a performance of the work in 1832 that she realized her suitor was serious. In October the next year, they were married — alas, leading to years of severe unhappiness for husband and wife, ending with a separation in 1844.

The work is in five movements, each containing a recurring theme representing the love object of the heartbroken “young musician” (Berlioz declined to identify himself in his notes). That melody, known as an idée fixe, subtly changes with each movement. It’s first heard as a passionate expression after a lengthy introduction in the opening. In the second movement, it appears as a plaintive flute tune played amidst a swirling waltz. The unsettled melody returns again briefly in the third movement, where our hero visits the countryside to escape his frustration, as ominous thunder rolls in the distance. The only solution to his misery is suicide, by an overdose of opium. Instead of dying, our hero hallucinates that he has murdered his beloved and is led to the guillotine in the famous March to the Scaffold. The furious finale finds him stumbling onto a witches’ sabbath in a forest clearing, horrified as he watches his beautiful love turned into a cackling witch merrily dancing the night away. — M.S.