Berlioz’s happiest evenings were at the Grand Opera, for which he prepared himself by solemn meditation.  At the head of a band of students and amateurs, he took on himself the right of the most outspoken criticism, and led the enthusiasm or the condemnation of the audience.  At this time Beethoven was barely tolerated in Paris, and the great symphonist was ruthlessly clipped and shorn to suit the French taste, which pronounced him “bizarre, incoherent, diffuse, bustling with rough modulations and wild harmonies, destitute of melody, forced in expression, noisy, and fearfully difficult,” even as England at the same time frowned down his immortal works as “obstreperous roarings of modern frenzy.”  Berlioz’s clear, stern voice would often be heard, when liberties were taken with the score, loud above the din of the instruments.  “What wretch has dared to tamper with the great Beethoven?” “Who has taken upon him to revise Gluck?” This self-appointed arbiter became the dread of the operatic management, for, as a pupil of the Conservatoire, he had some rights which could not be infringed.

Berlioz composed some remarkable works while at the Conservatoire, among which were the “Ouverture des Francs Juges,” and the symphonie “Fantastique,” and in many ways indicated that the bent of his genius had fully declared itself.  His decided and indomitable nature disdained to wear a mask, and he never sugar-coated his opinion, however unpalatable to others.  He was already in a state of fierce revolt against the conventional forms of the music of his day, and no trumpet-tones of protest were too loud for him.  He had now begun to write for the journals, though oftentimes his articles were refused on account of their fierce assaults.  “Your hands are too full of stones, and there are too many glass windows about,” was the excuse of one editor, softening the return of a manuscript.  But Berlioz did not fully know himself or appreciate the tendencies fermenting within him until in 1830 he became the victim of a grand Shakespearean passion.  The great English dramatist wrought most powerfully on Victor Hugo and Hector Berlioz, and had much to do with their artistic development.  Berlioz gives a very interesting account of his Shakespearean enthusiasm, which also involved one of the catastrophes of his own personal life.  “An English company gave some plays of Shakespeare, at that time wholly unknown to the French public.  I went to the first performance of ‘Hamlet’ at the Odeon.  I saw, in the part of Ophelia, Harriet Smithson, who became my wife five years afterward.  The effect of her prodigious talent, or rather of her dramatic genius, upon my heart and imagination, is only comparable to the complete overturning which the poet, whose worthy interpreter she was, caused in me.  Shakespeare, thus coming on me suddenly, struck me as with a thunderbolt.  His lightning opened the heaven of art to me with a sublime crash, and lighted up its farthest depths.  I recognized true dramatic grandeur, beauty, and truth.  I measured at the same time the boundless inanity of the notions of Shakespeare in France, spread abroad by Voltaire,