In preparation for this year’s Bard Music Festival, with its focus on Hector Berlioz, I finally pounded out my impressions of Berlioz’s book “Evenings with the Orchestra,” which I finished reading a few weeks ago. However, it will require some more smoothing before posting. Since I have a lot to do today, I’ll have to get to it tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, here’s a French biopic about Berlioz, titled “La Symphonie fantastique” (1942), named of course for the composer’s most famous piece of music. The film was produced during the German occupation, and Goebbels was reportedly none-too-happy with its patriotic flavor.

I haven’t watched it yet, but I look forward to seeing what the actors and filmmakers do with not only Berlioz, but his contemporaries, Victor Hugo, Eugène Delacroix, Prosper Mérimée, Alexandre Dumas, and Niccolò Paganini.

The subtitles are in Portuguese (!), but I’m sure you intelligent folks will be able to figure out how to translate it to English.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HACUovysAo

If you find titles a distraction, here it is unadorned, in the original French, on Internet Archive.

https://archive.org/details/la-symphonie-fantastique-1942-christian-jaque

“Hector Berlioz and His World” will be held at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, August 9-18. Find out more about the concert programs and related events here:

https://fishercenter.bard.edu/whats-on/programs/bard-music-festival/

Fisher Center at Bard