Hector Berlioz once packed a disguise, loaded pistols, and vials of poison, and set off across Europe to murder the fiancée who had jilted him, only to abandon the plan in Nice and write an overture instead. This episode traces the volatile life of the French Romantic composer who never learned to play the piano, trained as a doctor at his father’s insistence, and abandoned medicine after discovering the operas of Gluck in Paris.

The conversation explores how his lack of keyboard training freed him from conventional harmony, how his obsession with the actress Harriet Smithson produced the Symphonie fantastique and its recurring theme, and how Paganini’s gift of 20,000 francs funded Romeo and Juliet. It also covers his combative career as a music critic, his treatise on instrumentation, the demoralizing struggle to stage Les Troyens, the losses of his later years, and how the long-playing record finally vindicated his reputation after World War II.

• Why composing without piano muscle memory became Berlioz’s greatest advantage
• The Symphonie fantastique as a psychological narrative built around an opium-fueled vision
• Writing his Prix de Rome cantata while bullets from the 1830 July Revolution hit his building
• Harold in Italy, Paganini’s public apology, and the check that changed Western music
• How Berlioz’s outsized works were finally heard in full once the LP replaced 78 rpm records