Hector Berlioz was born in a small town in southeastern France where his father, Dr. Louis Berlioz, was a well-respected physician and atheist. Marie-Antoinette, his mother, was a devout Roman Catholic! Unlike most promising musicians and composers, Hector despised the piano and taught himself to play the guitar and flute. Along with music and reading he developed a strong heterosexual drive by the time he was twelve. The first infatuation was for a young lady already nine years his senior. Needless to say, that went nowhere and the next year his parents packed him off to school in Grenoble. To please his father, Hector agreed to become a doctor. With that in mind, he moved to Paris where he enrolled in the college of medicine. He was 17 with raging hormones and Paris is not Grenoble. From the get-go he disliked medicine. The sight of blood disgusted him. However, he was able to pass his exams with the minimum of effort and graduated as a doctor at 21. He never practiced medicine. During those four years, to his father's dismay, he frequented the operas, theatres, libraries and the conservatory of music. Harriet Smithson was an Irish Shakespearian actress with whom he was smitten. Her French was appalling and his English little better but he took English classes and became proficient in the language. The haughty Harriet would have nothing to do with hungry Hector. Meanwhile, he was also enamored of Gluck and Beethoven and not only composing his own music but becoming known as a musical critic.

At 27, Berlioz won the Prix de Rome after three failed attempts. This major achievement relieved him of financial problems for five years starting with two years in Rome. The prize coincided with his engagement to the Belgian pianist Marie Moke. Soon after arriving in Rome, Hector received an unwelcome letter from Madame Moke. Marie was marrying Camille Playel, scion of the Playel piano company. That Hector was upset is putting it mildly. Disguised as a woman, he set off immediately for Paris armed with a stolen pistol and poison with the intention of killing the mother, the daughter and her fiancé before poisoning himself. Fortunately, by the time he reached Nice, he came to his senses and returned to Rome. Back in Paris, a concert of his music was attended by everybody who was anybody including Harriet Smithson, who mothered his son and became the first of his two wives. Inspired by his time in Rome, Berlioz composed the opera Benvenuto Cellini. It was performed three or four times before being discarded, though the overture is still frequently performed. Its demise distressed the composer who used some of the opera's themes to create his Roman Carnival Overture as a "stand-alone" work. Noteworthy is the use of the cor anglais which is also known as the English horn. It is an alto instrument belonging to the oboe family though it is considerably longer and nothing about it is English. Dating originally from about 1720, it comes from Silesia in Germany.

Program notes by A. Ian Fraser