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

_______________________________ 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

_____________________________ 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

___________________________ 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