That struts and frets his hour upon the stageīerlioz wastes no time with his early years and gets right into the good stuff starting with his winning the Prix de Rome (after applying five years in a row). “Life’s but a walking shadow a poor player I knew when the memoirs began with one of my favorite quotes from “Macbeth” I was going to be in for a glorious ride: Not only did he come in contact with every famous 18th century artist (and there were a slew of them), he brilliantly wrote (not composed) about literally everything. There is a reason why Berlioz’ autobiography has been in print for 150 years. Then ‘Les Troyans.’ I cleared almost everything else off the iPod, went on a downloading frenzy and over the past few months celebrated my own personal Berlioz Festival. At 4:30 on Saturday afternoon, I downloaded ‘Damnation’ to the iPod.

But there it was, in all its quirky glory and I was hooked.

It’s not really an opera-more like a Medieval tableaux. By the time I got home I ran inside to get it on the Bose towers. But I had a thirty minute drive so, what the hell (literally), I will give it that. The Saturday Met broadcast was ‘The Damnation of Faust.’ (I think I had a recording in college I never broke the seal.) I thought about twisting the dial.

I, of course, was into the sturm und drang German school of Wagner, Bruckner and Mahler and therefore had no time for the frivolous French.įast forward to a couple months ago. He was constantly humming themes and snippets of melodies-his favorites: the Symphony Fantastic and Harold in Italy. But David ate drank and (I think) made love to Berlioz. we all know that third one should be Brahms. I had a roommate in college who insisted, to the annoyance of his theory professor, the “three B’s” were Bach, Beethoven and Berlioz.

The Memoirs by Hector Berlioz