The Loves of Hector Berlioz

Love was the driving force behind the composer’s masterpiece ‘Symphonie Fantastique.’

Hector Berlioz by August Prinzhofer, 1845. Public Domain

Hector Berlioz had an incurably sentimental personality. Moody and preoccupied with unrequited love, he fit the stereotype of the romantic artist perfectly. One of the women he longed for even inspired his greatest composition, the “Symphonie Fantastique.”

First Love

Berlioz fell in love for the first time when, at age 12, he became infatuated with a neighbor in pink shoes, Estelle Duboeuf. A young women of 18, she naturally turned him away and went off to marry someone else. Berlioz found himself unable to forget her, however. He turned to music for consolation, learning the flute and studying harmony.

Berlioz’s early works were inspired by Estelle and he wrote two quintets, which he later burned. “Nearly all my melodies were in the minor mode,” he wrote of his melancholy style. “A black veil covered my thoughts.”

Berlioz’s Muse

Berlioz’s first love became an ideal in his mind. He went on to compose an opera, “Estelle et Némorin,” which he also ended up burning. Then, a few years later, his attentions turned elsewhere.

In 1827, Berlioz attended a performance of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” in Paris. He later referred to this moment as “the supreme drama of my life.” The reason? An Irish actress playing Ophelia.

Harriet Smithson as Ophelia. Public Domain

Harriet Constance Smithson, three years older than Berlioz, was not regarded as a first-rate actress. She even forgot her lines during her madness scene. Experiencing a memory lapse, she walked across the stage in a daze, burst into tears after beginning a song, then walked off.

Berlioz had no idea anything was amiss—he didn’t know a word of English and understood almost nothing of the play. He was gripped by the emotional power of Smithson’s performance, though, and her tremulous voice.

Obsessed, he wandered the Parisian countryside until he dropped from exhaustion, falling asleep where he fell. He sent Smithson flowers and wrote letters to which she never responded. He even rented an apartment across from Harriet to be near her.

The ‘Symphonie Fantastique’

This obsession drove Berlioz to compose his magnum opus, the “Symphonie Fantastique.” It was, essentially, an elaborate attempt to woo Smithson. He continued sending her letters, but she resisted his advances and did not attend the symphony’s premiere in 1830.

Two years later, Berlioz arranged a second premiere in Paris. As it happened, two days before, he entered his publisher’s store, where he encountered an Englishman who was a close friend of Smithson’s. Through this connection, Berlioz arranged to invite Harriet to the concert.

On Dec. 9, 1832, Smithson took her place in a box next to the orchestra. She tried to ignore the audience who, for some reason, kept looking at her and whispering. She read the program’s title, “Fantastic Symphony: An Episode in the Life of an Artist,” and was apparently the only person there who did not realize she was the heroine of this “episode.” Then, Berlioz appeared in the orchestra pit only a few feet away from her. Though she had forgotten his name, she recognized his face.

“That is surely he” who had sent her all those letters, Harriet told herself. “Poor young man, he has forgotten me, no doubt. I hope so.”

Title page of the manuscript score for "Symphonie Fantastique." Public Domain

The “Symphonie Fantastique” is central to the development of “program music,” or instrumental music that tells a story. Although no words are spoken in the piece itself, Berlioz wrote program notes that he gave the audience.

Harriet would likely have read the text accompanying the first movement: “The author imagines that a young musician … sees for the first time a woman who unites all the charms of the ideal person his imagination was dreaming of, and falls desperately in love with her.”

The ‘Idée Fixe’

The subsequent movements of the “Symphonie” detail the artist’s melancholy reveries and visions resulting from opium poisoning. Throughout, the “beloved image” recurs in the artist’s mind as a musical idea, an “idée fixe.”

Essentially a leitmotif, the “idée fixe” begins in the first movement as a sweeping melody. In the second movement, it transforms into a waltz with rhythms signifying the artist’s inner struggle. In the third movement the idea returns in a slow tempo played by a solo flute and violins, expressing a mixture of hope and sadness. In the fourth movement the artist, dreaming he has killed his beloved, is being led to the scaffold. The “idée fixe” appears briefly, played by a solo clarinet, representing his last thoughts. In the fifth and final movement, a witches’ sabbath is gathered for his funeral. The idea returns for a final time, again played by the clarinet but altered into a vulgar dance tune.

Harriet must have felt increasingly uncomfortable as the performance progressed, and as she gradually fit the pieces together. Berlioz was not satisfied to merely hint at his passion through music and accompanying notes. After the intermission, another work was performed, “Lélio,” composed as a sequel to the “Symphonie.”

Unlike the earlier work, this one had words. An actor recited: “Ah, could I but find her, this Juliet, this Ophelia whom my heart is ever seeking!” A flowery description followed, delving into Berlioz’s desires to “sleep my last sleep in her beloved arms.”

Late-Life Love

The day after the performance, Berlioz received permission to visit Harriet. They married the following year. As is often the case with high ideals, the reality of being with Smithson did not live up to the dream.

The problems began before the wedding. When Smithson expressed doubts about marrying Berlioz, he drank poison. Fortunately, “her protestations of love and sorrow brought back my desire to live,” he wrote a friend. “I took an emetic, was ill three days and am still alive!”

Harriet left Berlioz after 10 years, following an affair he had with a mistress, the opera singer Marie Recio. When Smithson died, he married Recio in 1854. After Recio herself died in 1862, Berlioz became fixated on tracking down his first love, Estelle Dubœuf. He learned that she was still alive, now a widow with the last name Fornier.

A portrait of Marie Recio from a photograph taken in Paris. Public Domain

Showing up at Estelle’s door one day, he was greeted by “a stout, gray old lady dressed in black with a white bonnet tied under her chin.” Though time had not been kind, Berlioz’s passionate idealism remained undiminished, and he saw “the dazzling loveliness” of her former youth.

Estelle did not recognize him. After they became reacquainted, however, she said that she had read his biography. Berlioz dismissed the volume and promised to send her the autobiography he was writing. When the time came to part, he looked at her with “hungry eyes” and kissed her hand. She dismissed his romantic advances, but agreed that he could visit again.

When Berlioz died, his estimated net worth was equal to $1 million today. He left the poverty-stricken Estelle, his first and last love, an annuity of 1,600 francs in his will. She lived out her final years in comfort.

Though Berlioz’s life had been emotionally tumultuous, he ended it on a high note.

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