Symphonie fantastique, op. 14

Berlioz completed the Symphonie fantastique in the spring of 1830 and it was first played at the Paris Conservatoire on 5 December that year under François-Antoine Habeneck. He distributed a printed programme describing an artist who poisons himself with opium and dreams of his beloved, present in each movement as a recurring theme he called the idée fixe. The obsession was real: Berlioz had seen the Irish actress Harriet Smithson play Ophelia in 1827 and had not yet met her. Liszt's piano transcription of 1833 spread the work faster than orchestral performances did.