Symphonie fantastique

Symphony by Hector Berlioz, Op. 14, composed in 1830. Berlioz gave it a programme arising out of his disappointed love for the actress Harriet Smithson and representing the crazed dreams of a poet crossed in love who has taken opium. The five movements are: 1. Rêveries-passions/Reveries-Passions: depicting the emotions when the protagonist first meets his beloved; 2. Un bal/A Ball: in which he spots his unobtainable beloved at a ball; 3. Scène aux champs/Scene in the Country: in which the artist, alone on summer's evening, realises she will never be his; 4. Marche au supplice/March to the Scaffold: having overdosed on opium, he has a nightmare that he is witnessing his own execution; 5. Songe d'une nuit de Sabbat/Dream of a Sabbath Night is the final nightmare: he is buried during a witches' sabbath; the leader of the coven is revealed as his beloved.

The work is particularly famous for its use of a recurring musical theme (‘idée fixe’) to represent the beloved; it becomes progressively more distorted throughout the nightmares.

The work was revised in Italy and first performed in Paris, on 5 December 1830; it was performed with its sequel, Lélio, in Paris on 9 December 1832.