Facebook Twitter Instagram
    Facebook Twitter YouTube
    Latest Articles
    • Recruitment Section at the 50 Plus Show
    • Personal finance and property expert Sinead Ryan to speak at The 50 Plus Show
    • Life is for living….
    • Your chance to win the Fantastic Finger Puppet Story Set with Nursery Rhymes from mimitoys.ie
    • Mimitoys.ie, one the largest selection of children’s puppets in Ireland are exhibiting at the 50 Plus Show
    • Improve your Digital Skills at The 50 Plus Show
    • Seniorline are celebrating 25 years at the 50 Plus Show
    • Driving Life with Conor Faughnan. Episode 36: Conor meets Charlie McGettigan
    Senior Times
    Podcasts
    • Home
    • News
    • Features
      1. Driving Life
      2. Fashion & Beauty
      3. Finance
      4. Food & Wine
      5. Further Education
      6. Galleries
      7. Gardening
      8. IRISH GEN POD SERIES
      9. Health
      10. Hobbies & Pastimes
      11. Legal
      12. Literature
      13. Nostalgia
      14. Profiles
      15. 50 Plus Show
      16. Sport
      17. Travel
      18. What’s On
      Featured
      February 15, 20230

      SeniorTimes Rewind – Mike Murphy talks to Author, Deirdre Purcell

      Recent
      March 21, 2023

      Your chance to win the Fantastic Finger Puppet Story Set with Nursery Rhymes from mimitoys.ie

      March 19, 2023

      Driving Life with Conor Faughnan. Episode 36: Conor meets Charlie McGettigan

      March 19, 2023

      Alix Gardner Cooking Demo’s at the 50 Plus Show

    • Podcast
    • Competitions
    • 50 Plus Show
      • Whats On
      • Register
    • Magazine
      • Previous Issues
      • Subscribe
      • Advertise
    • Meeting Place
    • Contact
    Senior Times
    You are at:Home»Features»Profiles»The Irish woman who won the love of one of history’s greatest composers
    Hector Berlioz, after Beethoven arguably the most original composer of the nineteenth century

    The Irish woman who won the love of one of history’s greatest composers

    0
    By Senior Times on September 29, 2022 Profiles, The Arts
    An Irish woman played a major role in the life one of the nineteenth century’s  greatest composers – John Low traces the troubled relationship between actress Harriet Smithson and Hector Berlioz

    The Irish actress Harriett Constance Smithson (1800-1854)

    Born in 1800, Harriet Smithson was an actress from Ennis, Co Clare. Both her father and mother were actors and she made her stage debut in Dublin aged 14. Her performance received rave reviews and for the next few years she travelled the length and breadth of Ireland in various productions, playing anything from light roles to Shakespeare.

    Ambitious for greater challenges, she was attracted to London and made her first appearance in  Drury Lane in 1808.  After a shaky start her confidence grew and she joined the Drury Lane Company in 1820 and was soon playing  leading roles to acclaim from  the critics.  But The Times critic was not impressed, describing  her  as  ‘as a face and features well adapted to her profession but [an actress]not likely to make a great impression on a London audience, or to figure among stars of the first magnitude.’

    She made her Paris debut in 1827 in Sheridan’s The Rivals but received negative reviews. She fared better in another Sheridan vehicle She Stoops to Conquer  where she was highly praised for her acting ability.

    Later that year she left a lasting impression on the Paris critics and public when playing Opheilia in a production of Hamlet. As one newspaper reported:

    ‘Miss Smithson acted the scene in which, robbed of her sanity, she takes her own veil to be her father’s body with utmost grace and truth. The whole passage which seemed long and relatively insignificant and even exaggerated in reading, had tremendous impact on stage. The most remarkable feature of her acting is her pantomime; she adopts fantastic postures; and she uses the dying fall in her inflections, without ever ceasing to be natural..’

    In the audience on that first night of Hamlet was, arguably, after Beethoven, the most original composer of the nineteenth century  – Hector Berlioz. (1803-1869). Berlioz’s father was a doctor and it was expected Hector, too, would take up medicine. He did attend medical school for a time before, to the consternation of his family, he decided on  music as a profession. He was accepted as a student at the Paris Conservatoire  but his refusal to follow the traditional rules and teachings of the ultra  conservative  professors soon had him labelled an enfant terrible.

    But he came round to towing the establishment  line which  enabled him to win France’s  premier music prize – the Prix de Rome – in 1830. In his lifetime  opinion was divided for many years between those who thought him a genius and those who  viewed his music as  incoherent, particularly when  the  vast instrumental  forces  he  often called for in his works  — including armies of brass and drums of all sizes –  often resulting in an  earth-shattering  blaze  of sounds which audiences  had never  heard before.

    The first night  Hamlet performance  turned out to be  life-changing for Smithson and Berlioz

    Berlioz recalls in his memoirs: ‘I come now to the supreme drama of my life. An English company had come over to Paris to give a season of Shakespeare at the Odeon. I was at the first night of Hamlet. In the role of Ophelia I saw Harriet Smithson. The impression made on my heart and mind by her extraordinary talent, nay, her dramatic genius, was equalled only by the havoc wrought in me by the poet she so nobly interpreted.

    ‘I read Moore; his melodies draw tears from me from time to time. He is her compatriot: Ireland, always Ireland! That is all I can say’

    His recollections were, to put it mildly, selective. According to friends  he was completely besotted with Smithson and today he would probably be arrested for stalking.  Apart from writing her almost daily letters and sending her flowers  he even rented an apartment close to her own so that he could follow her movements.

    For years  she ignored his extraordinary advances, but eventually in  1832, after  numerous rejections, she accepted an invitation to attend  one of his  concerts. They met after the concert and quickly became lovers. Berlioz soon proposed marriage and her initial reaction was lukewarm, and both families and friends were against the union. Berlioz persisted and they were married at the British Embassy in Paris on 3 October 1833. Liszt  was a witness. Just over a year later the couple’s only child  Louis was born.

    The first few years of the marriage  were happy and Berlioz  was enjoying huge success across Europe both as a composer and as a conductor. His works were  applauded for their dramatic intensity and originally.

    His most celebrated composition, then and now, was the Symphonie Fantastique, an  episodic work said  to have been  inspired by his early infatuation with Smithson. Fellow composers and critics have been in awe of him for  the last one  hundred and fifty years or so,  despite falling out of favour  in the decades following his death. César Franck once said that ‘Berlioz’s whole output is made up of masterpieces’. And there’s a story that Paganini fell at his feet and declared him the rightful successor to Beethoven. In more recent times George Bernard Shaw said: ‘Call no conductor sensitive in the highest degree to musical impressions until you have heard him in Berlioz and Mozart.’

    United in death.. the grave of Hector Berlioz, buried with his two wives, Harriet Smithson and Marie Recio, in Montmartre Cemetery, Paris

    But while Berlioz was feted far and wide, Smithson’s  career was going from bad to worse, not helped by  her organising and appearing in  a number of  financially disastrous productions.

    She became  jealous of his success and  there were stories that she often physically abused him. While he continued to support her financially their relationship was now toxic and he embarked on a series of affairs before becoming seriously involved with  the opera singer Marie Recio who would become his second wife.

    Smithson  eventually retired from the stage in 1836.  She left their apartment  in 1843, ten years after they were married. Over the next few years her health deteriorated and she suffered  a series of strokes.  She died in 1853. She was  buried at Cimetière Saint-Vincent, Paris but  Berlioz later had her body re-interred at the Montmartre Cemetery where they both rest today, along with his second wife.

    Like Smithson Berlioz’s final years were marred by illness no doubt brought on by an exhausting series of  European tours . He also had to  endure the crushing loss of Smithson – despite their battles, bitterness and break-up he always held a candle for her – as well as the sudden death of his second wife. If that were not enough his beloved son Louis died abroad with yellow fever.

    Berlioz died aged 66 on 8th  March 1869.

     

    Berlioz selected works

    Berlioz’s output was enormous. His music can be challenging because it is so original and but  his output is well worth exploring. Here are a few suggestions.

    Symphonie fantastique and Harold in Italy.

    Choral works  the Requiem and L’Enfance du Christ,

    His three operas Benvenuto Cellini, Les Troyens and Béatrice et Bénédict.

    Dramatic symphony Roméo et Juliette and the dramatic legend La Damnation de Faust.

    Song cycle Les Nuits d’été (Summer Nights).

    Among his best known overtures are Le Roi Lear, Le Carnaval romain and Le Corsaire .

    Spread the love
    Berlioz classical
    Senior Times
    • Website
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • LinkedIn

    Senior Times publishes Senior Times magazine and are producers of the SeniorTimes Podcasts. They are also organisers of The 50 Plus Show run throughout the country

    Related Posts

    Michael Lyster meets Horslips Founder Jim Lockhart: Part 2

    A celebration of Samuel Beckett

    Michael Lyster meets Horslips’ Jim Lockhart

    Comments are closed.

    Driving Life Podcasts

    Gen Pod Series

    Search the Site
    Spotify

    Subscribe

    Our Podcasts

    Senior Times Podcast Platform · Next Up
    Subscribe to our Newsletter
    * indicates required
    Dublin
    March 30, 2023, 3:30 pm
    Rain
    Rain
    13°C
    real feel: 12°C
    wind speed: 3 m/s SW
    sunrise: 7:04 am
    sunset: 7:56 pm
    Forecast March 30, 2023
    day
    Mostly cloudy with showers
    Mostly cloudy with showers
    16°C
    wind speed: 3 m/s SSW
    night
    Rain
    Rain
    8°C
    wind speed: 4 m/s ESE
     
    Follow Us On Facebook
    Follow us on YouTube
    Follow us on Twitter
    Tweets by @seniortimesmag
    Copyright © 2023 Sports & Leisure. Designed by clikcreative.com.

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.