Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French
Romantic composer. His output includes orchestral works such as Harold
in Italy, choral pieces including his Requiem and L'enfance du Christ,
and works of hybrid genres such as the "dramatic symphony" Roméo et
Juliette and the "dramatic legend" La damnation de Faust. Expected to
enter medicine, Berlioz defied his family by taking up music, and won
the Prix de Rome in 1830. Berlioz married the Irish Shakespearean
actress Harriet Smithson, who inspired his first major success, the
Symphonie fantastique, in which an idealised depiction of her occurs
throughout. His first opera, Benvenuto Cellini, was a failure. The
second, the epic Les Troyens, was so large in scale that it was never
staged in its entirety during his lifetime. Meeting only occasional
success in France as a composer, Berlioz turned to conducting, in which
he gained an international reputation. He also wrote musical journalism
throughout much of his career.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Berlioz>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1886:
The London-based football club Arsenal, then known as Dial
Square, played their first match on the Isle of Dogs.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Arsenal_F.C._%281886%E2%80%931966%29>
1920:
Irish War of Independence: Following an Irish Republican Army
ambush of an Auxiliary patrol, British forces burned and looted numerous
buildings in Cork.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Cork>
2006:
Criticized worldwide as a "meeting of Holocaust deniers", the
International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust
opened in Tehran.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Conference_to_Review_the_Global_Vision_of_the_Holocaust>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
filthy lucre:
(idiomatic, derogatory, often humorous in modern use) Money, especially
if obtained dishonestly.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/filthy_lucre>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
I am of course confident that I will fulfill my tasks as a writer
in all circumstances — from my grave even more successfully and more
irrefutably than in my lifetime. No one can bar the road to truth, and
to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death. But may it be
that repeated lessons will finally teach us not to stop the writer’s
pen during his lifetime? At no time has this ennobled our history.
--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn>