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‘My idea was to rush back to Paris, in order to mercilessly kill two guilty women and an innocent man. Having done that, I would, of course, proceed to kill myself.\u2019 Over-wrought emotions, from the pages of a melodramatic romantic novel? No. The lines are from Hector Berlioz<\/strong><\/a>\u2019s Memoirs<\/em>, and are in essence true.<\/p> Yes, at one point in his psychologically turbulent young manhood, the flamboyant French composer was indeed intending to initiate a mass shooting incident. <\/p> The catalyst was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a woman. Camille Moke was just 18 when Berlioz first met her, and already one of the most brilliant pianists of her generation. Berlioz was eight years older, and reeling from a disastrous attraction to the Irish actress Harriet Smithson, an infatuation which fuelled the heady imaginings of his Symphonie fantastique<\/i><\/a><\/strong>. <\/p>‘The catalyst was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a woman’<\/h2>