Berlioz

"What an improbable novel my life is!" Berlioz wrote in 1832 to his friend Albert Du Boys. To his sister Adele, "I am absorbed continually by the strangeness, the romanticness of my situation." What was continually absorbing Berlioz in 1832 was in fact his passionate pursuit of the actress Harriet Smithson, who for so long had resisted him, and whom he at last marries at the beginning of the second volume of David Cairns's masterly biography. To begin with, the marriage was a happy one, produced an adored son Louis, and released Berlioz's extraordinary creative energies. But Harriet was unable to find work. The marriage became unbalanced. Its end was tragic for them both. "Oh to forget, to forget!" He wrote after her death. "What can relieve me of memory, blot out all those pages from the book and volume of my heart!" The pursuit of love, and its defining place in Berlioz's life, is one of the great themes of Berlioz: Servitude and Greatness. It is only one among many brilliantly traced by the author. Cairns describes the genesis of the famous works of Berlioz's maturity -- Benvenuto Cellini, the Requiem, Romeo and Juliet, The Damnation of Faust and above all the crowning masterpie