Cast
Leonard Bernstein — Conductor
Program notes
Leonard Bernstein leads the Orchestre National de France in an exciting interpretation of Berlioz’s unforgettable Symphonie fantastique. Filmed in 1976 at Paris’s Théâtre des Champs Élysées, their brilliant performance is captured for generations to come in this archival footage!
A brief “episode from the life of an artist” immortalized by one of the 19th century’s most groundbreaking musical scores… The year is 1827, and a young composer by the name of Berlioz goes to the theater in Paris for a performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The Irish actress Harriet Smithson, performing the role of the tormented Ophelia, entrances him and inspires him to incredible artistic heights, leading him to compose Symphonie fantastique, the prototypical symphony of musical Romanticism, in just two months. For her part, Smithson would take several years before responding to his letters, but by 1833 they were married! Experience this work in its full glory in Bernstein and the ONF's once-in-a-lifetime performance!
