Composer of the Week: Berlioz

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Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

Composer of the Week - Brand

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: Hector Berlioz (1803-1869): Ophelia

Ophelia

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), Ophelia

Donald Macleod pulls back the curtain on Berlioz’s greatest obsession.

Donald Macleod explores the women who shaped Hector Berlioz’s life and work. Today, his Ophelia – the love interest who was to have a fatal influence over his life.

Donald Macleod pulls back the curtain on Berlioz’s greatest obsession.

Hector Berlioz was one the most innovative and rebellious musicians of 19th-century France. He was a man of unwaveringly high expectations, in his wider life as well as his music. As the quintessential Romantic, one friend said that love was the “alpha and omega of his existence”. This week Donald Macleod looks at Berlioz through the passions and relationships that shaped who he was and what he created, exploring the romantic obsessions of an especially obsessive man. We’ll also hear a movement of his Symphonie Fantastique each day – Berlioz’s best-known work, and the musical embodiment of his most powerful infatuation.

Today, starting with the woman who would have a fatal influence over him – his Ophelia. As the curtain rises for a performance of Hamlet at the Paris Odeon theatre, little does Berlioz know what he would later call the “supreme drama” of his life, is about to begin... 


Marche Funèbre pour la dernière scène d‘Hamlet (Tristia, Op 18) 
Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique
John Eliot Gardiner, conductor

Irlande (La belle voyageuse)
Anne Sofie von Otter, soprano
Cord Garben, piano

Romeo et Juliette – Scène d’amour
London Symphony Orchestra
Colin Davis, conductor

Lelio – Choeur d’ombres
John Alldis Choir
London Symphony Orchestra	
Colin Davis, conductor

Symphonie Fantastique (1st movement – Reveries – Passions)
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Mariss Jansons, conductor


Produced in Cardiff by Amelia Parker

Composer of the Week: Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

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Donald Macleod looks at Berlioz through the passions and relationships that shaped him.

Donald Macleod looks at Berlioz through the passions and relationships that shaped who he was and what he created.

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