Hector Berlioz, the great French composer of the 19th century, mostly made a living as a music critic What chance would he have of this today? With print media collapsing everywhere, even sports correspondents are losing their jobs.

Unlike today, people over 100 years ago, always wanted  something new in the way of music. Paganini, the great violinist, is reported to have said "Beethoven is dead, now we have Berlioz". Berlioz's literary Gods were Shakespeare and the ancient Greeks. The monodramatic piece "Lelio" was written as a continuation of his "Symphonie Fantastique".

Be that as it may, Berlioz was a terrific man of letters. His "Memoirs", translated by David Cairns, are a delightful, hilarious and educational read. The monodramatic portions of "Lelio" show off Berlioz at his very French "Shakesperian" literary style. I was infuriated last year when MTT at San Francisco Symphony omitted all the spoken dialogues, just giving us the music. Furthermore "Lelio" was performed BEFORE not AFTER the "Symphonie Fantastique" as Berlioz intended.

I remember, many years ago, the great French actor, Jean Louis Barrault, reciting these very effective lines. We have been doing our little best to try to redress this error. We have been performing sections of "Lelio" in English, to make it more accessible to most of our public.

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