Nice StoryShortly after his arrival in Rome (on a scholarship), Hector Berlioz was dismayed to learn that his finacee in France, the pianist Marie-Felicite-Denise Moke, had married another man. He immediately plotted his revenge.
"Two tears of rage started from my eyes, and instantly I knew my course," he later recalled. "I must go post-haste to Paris and there kill without compunction two guilty women [Moke and her mother] and one innocent man. As for subsequently killing myself, after a coup on this scale it was of course the very least I could do. My plan of campaign was formed in a few minutes. They knew me, they would be expecting me to come back. Therefore I must take every precaution and go in disguise."
After completing the orchestration of a certain work, Berlioz procured a dress and some accessories, a pair of double-barrelled pistols, and bottles of poison (laudanum and strychnine). Though his disguise was lost in Genoa, Berlioz was not easily deterred. After some time, he found a suitable replacement from a local milliner. Incredibly, when he reached Nice, however, Berlioz suddenly found his anger cured - and later reported having spent three of the nicest weeks of his life there.
[On another occasion, Berlioz avenged his unrequited love for the actress Harriet Constance Smithson by casting her (briefly) as a whore at the witches' Sabbath in the last movement of his Symphonie fantastique. After much pleading and pestering, she finally consented to marry him.]
Berlioz, [Louis] Hector (1803-1869) French composer, leading representative of romanticism in French music [noted for such
works as
Symphonie Fantastique (1830),
Romeo and Juliet (1839), and the opera
The Trojans (1855–1858)]
[Sources: Berlioz, Memoirs]More [Louis] Berlioz anecdotesRelated Anecdote Keywords:
Cures Cities Travel Second Thoughts Revenge Anger
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