Berlioz’s Fantastic Symphony
The Kansas City Symphony concludes its season this week with the Fantastic Symphony, Hector Berlioz’s artistic response to a fruitless search for an Irish actress in France whom he fancied the pants off.
You can read details of the KC Symphony’s performance of the “Symphonie Fantastique: Episode from the Life of an Artist” on KC Community News in Classical Corner by Tim McDonald.
In 1827, Berlioz attended a Parisian performance of William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” Harriet Smithson was an Irish actress, born in County Clare, who played the role of Ophelia in that performance.
Berlioz was quite smitten with Smithson, so much so in fact, that he penned frantic love letters that she never answered. Consumed with romantic fervor, Berlioz reportedly wandered through the French countryside until he dropped from exhaustion and was revived by his friends.
It’s a great story that Berlioz has conjured up including taking opium to imagine his beloved in a series of increasingly bizarre hallucinations. The melody that represents the young wan is perfectly lovely in the first 2 movements, but then becomes increasingly pathological, as he imagines her betraying him in the 3rd movement. In the 4th he is beheaded after killing her, and in the final movement she returns as a witch.
Meanwhile back in real life Berlioz eventually wed Smithson in 1833, proving that the Fantastic Symphony was perhaps an over-reaction to not finding something when he simply hadn’t looked properly.
And then they separated in 1840, proving perhaps that his artistic response was right on the money all along.
Dates & Times:
The program will be presented in 3 concerts:
• 8pm Friday, June 6, 2008
• 8pm Saturday, June 7, 2008
• 2pm Sunday, June 8, 2008.
Location:
The Lyric Theater, 11th and Central streets, Kansas City, Missouri.
Tickets:
For tickets or information, call the Symphony box office at (816) 471-0400.
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