On Sept. 11, 1827, Kemble’s company from London inaugurated a Shakespearian season at the Odéon Theatre. “Hamlet” was the first offering, with the famous English actor in the title role. The Ophelia was Henrietta Smithson, tall, lithe and Irish. All literary and artistic Paris was on hand. From the moment the daughter of Polonius stepped on the stage Hector was lost! No thunderbolt could more completely have devastated him. When the performance ended he rushed home, avoiding all acquaintances to whom he might have had to talk. Then he went out again and walked all night along the Seine, determined to wear himself out to obtain the temporary solace of sleep. It was useless. Next evening the visitors were giving “Romeo and Juliet”. Hector dashed to the Odéon early in the day and bought himself a ticket, to be sure no unforeseen hitch might prevent him obtaining his usual admission. As he knew no word of English, he procured a translation and strove for a few hours to recreate in his mind a picture of Henrietta Smithson before again looking upon her in the flesh. If possible the effect of the previous evening was intensified.
He would now wander aimlessly through suburbs and countryside, sometimes even sleeping in open fields; or he would set to music Irish lyrics by Thomas Moore; or steep himself in more Shakespeare, dabble in Byron and Walter Scott, set about discovering Goethe and acquainting himself with “Faust!” He moved from the quarters of his friend Charbonnel and installed himself in a room in the Rue Richelieu directly opposite the house where Henrietta lived. He had never so much as exchanged a word with the actress who, for her part, never yet dreamed that such a person as Hector Berlioz existed—let alone that he loved her wildly. Nonetheless, Hector made a point of avoiding further Shakespeare performances—or so at least, he claims in his Memoirs. “More experiences of the kind would have killed me!” But the inspiration of this Juliet and Ophelia, further enhanced by the romantic literature with which he was suffusing himself and the grandeur of those Beethoven works he was beginning to discover, were stimulating his creative fancy. He wrote overtures based on “Waverly”, “King Lear”, “The Corsair”; he wrote (in 1829) “Eight Scenes from Faust” and a “Ballade of the King of Thule, in Gothic Style” (things which were later to form the basis of “La Damnation de Faust”); he composed a set of “Nine Irish Songs”; above all, he wrote (and then revised) a work which was to become, in some respects, his most widely known and famous, the “Symphonie Fantastique”—a kind of symphonic phantasmagoria, with Henrietta as its chief motivation and himself as its chief actor.