Hector Berlioz was a composer and music critic born and died in France. As a boy, his father sent him to Paris to attend medical school, to become a doctor and eventually carry on the family business. Unfortunately, Berlioz did not enjoy it, so he dropped out and entered music school against his family’s wishes. While in Paris and attending school, he saw Hamlet, a play written by Shakespeare, and immediately fell in love with Shakespeare (although he spoke virtually no English) and the actress who played Ophelia, Harriet Smithson. He said in regards to Shakespeare and Smithson, that “‘the impression made on my heart and mind by her extraordinary talent, nay her dramatic genius, was equalled only by the havoc wrought in me by the poet she