Hector Berlioz wrote the Symphonie fantastique — a symphony about a lovesick artist who hallucinates his own execution — because he was obsessively in love with an Irish actress who did not know he existed. He expanded the orchestra to unprecedented size, invented modern orchestration, and spent his career fighting a French musical establishment that considered him a dangerous madman. He was right and they were wrong, but he died believing he had failed.

This episode traces Berlioz from his medical student origins through the obsession with Harriet Smithson, the Symphonie fantastique scandal, and the visionary orchestral writing that went unappreciated until long after his death.

• Berlioz’s abandonment of medical school after seeing a dissection room and his pivot to music
• The obsessive pursuit of Harriet Smithson and the Symphonie fantastique it inspired
• The expansion of the orchestra and the Treatise on Instrumentation that became every composer’s bible
• The French establishment’s rejection, his belief that he had failed, and the posthumous vindication