Sherman - Jogging with the Great Ray Charles

Between the crescendos I could hear Tybalt curse and Juliet sigh. I could hear Friar Laurence recommend the vial of magic potion. I could hear Romeos footsteps as he rushed toward the crypt and I knew that no matter how furiously the young violinists sawed away at their instruments nothing would save the doomed lovers. What inspired such music? The first time young Berlioz saw Shakespeares tragedy he fell head over heels for the actress playing Juliet. Her name was Harriet Smithson and Berliozs parents despised her, called her a penniless Protestant. Berlioz persisted with love letters, flowers, chocolates.

The marriage didnt last. Harriet began to drink, forgot her lines, stumbled onstage, blamed her failing acting career on her husbands success. And that was not the end of their sadness. They had one child, Louis, who became a merchant sea captain. At thirty-three he contracted yellow fever and died aboard his ship, headed for the tropics. When Berlioz heard the news, he said he could feel the insufferable heat, the nauseating sway of the boat.

He grew inconsolable, burned all his correspondence, sold everything he possessed, everything except a baton given to him by Mendelssohn, one dark suit in which he could continue to conduct and in which he could be decently buried, and a doleful guitar a gift from Paganini.