The program of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique begins with a familiar theme. A young man finds himself consumed by his love for a woman from the moment he sees her. He finds himself driven mad by this passion, leading him later to madness and despair. This idea of all-consuming love at first sight is everywhere in movies, TV shows, and music. We love seeing these beautiful stories of true love play out in media, but our own love lives rarely play out the same. Throughout our lives, our perception of love often changes as we become more cynical, perhaps still believing in love, but understanding that life is not a fairytale.
It is often said that life imitates art and vice versa, and this can certainly be said for the love life of Hector Berlioz. From a young age, he took after romantic heroes such as Orpheus who pined over women with all their souls. As a young teenager, he became enthralled with a young woman and remembered for the rest of his life. Later on, he met Henriette Smithson and instantly felt he was in love with her, despite her apparent lack of interest. In his memoir, Berlioz calls him meeting her the greatest drama of his life and recalls how her effect on him was as poignant as Shakespeare’s. After this first meeting, he attempted several times to get her to notice him, feeling utter despair when she ignored him, writing “ It is very difficult to describe a suffering like the one I felt; this tearing of heart, this dreadful isolation, this empty world, these thousand tortures which circulate in the veins with icy blood, this distaste for living and this impossibility of dying” Berlioz’s many years of unrequited love were a clear inspiration for Symphonie Fantastique, as Berlioz admitted in his memoir, writing “The subject of the musical drama is no other, as we know, that the story of my love for Miss Smithson, of my anguish, of my painful dreams”
Several years later, Henriette Smithson finally attended a performance of Symphonie Fantastique, realized it was about her, and decided to contact him, leading to their marriage in 1833. However, while their marriage started off happy, it began to decline as Smithson’s career suffered and she began to struggle with alcoholism, eventually leaving him in 1843. Despite the many years that Berlioz had spent pursuing Smithson, it seemed that their reality did not match his fantasies. Despite this, Berlioz never seemed to give up on the idea of love, describing Smithson lovingly in his memoir and comparing to heroines such as Ophelia and Juliet. However, it could be argued from an outside perspective that Berlioz’s fantastical view of Smithson clouded his judgments and prevented him from creating a long-lasting relationship beyond infatuation.
Reading Berlioz’s memoir, I can relate somewhat to his dramatic feelings about Smithson. I have a very similar personality of wanting to dive into a relationship head-first, ignoring any red flags, and becoming consumed by my feelings of infatuation. In my first relationship, I told my boyfriend I was in love with him only two months into dating. I also tend to hold a romanticized view of a person in my head, seeing an idealized future of life with them. The problem with this way of thinking is that no one is going to be able to match this romanticized perception, so keeping it in mind eventually leads to disappointment. Much like Berlioz, we get so caught up in this desire to be with the version of someone that we have in our head that we do not consider the very real flaws of the real person.
In addition to the many comparisons that Berlioz makes of Smithson to fictional characters, he also sometimes treats her like a goal or a reward that he will finally achieve. In his memo, he describes how once he had married her, despite the objections of others “she was mine, I defied everything”. While the objectification of women was likely quite commonplace in that era, it is still quite pervasive in our modern concept of true love. In many stories, a man will see a woman and project everything he desires onto her. While she sometimes returns this affection, any objections to it are often seen as trivial and her desires are not always taken into consideration. In critiquing Berlioz’s relationship with Smithson, I am not trying to say that he didn’t love her or that fantastical romances can never happen. However, most relationships do not mirror those in media, and I believe that his story shows the dangers of following these exaggerated ideals. While it is wonderful to hear stories about true, predestined, love, the reality of relationships is that people are much more flawed and complex.