Hector Berlioz’s Lélio, ou Le retour à la vie was a sequel to his Symphonie
fantastique, which premiered in 1830 at the Paris Conservatory. Comprising
six sections, it was composed during his travels to and around Italy, and
made use of material that he had already composed for the prestigious
Prix de Rome.
Berlioz  married  the  Irish  Shakespearean  actress  Harriet  Smithson  in  1833;
the  Symphonie  fantastique  had  been  an  attempt  to  assuage  her  initial
rejection of him, and their marriage by no means turned out to be the
fulfillment of all dreams. In his memoirs about the 1832 premiere of Lélio
at  the  Paris  Conservatory,  Berlioz  made  these  observations  about  his  
future wife:
“...  the  passionate  character  of  the  work,  its  ardent  melodies,  its
exclamations  of  love,  its  outbursts  of  anger  [...]  must  have  made  an
unexpected  and  deep  impression  on  her  sensitive  nature  and  poetic
imagination. [...] When in the monodrama the actor Bocage, who recited
the role of Lélio (that is, myself), pronounced the following words: ‘Oh, if I
could only find her, the Juliet, the Ophelia for whom my heart is searching!’
[...] she thought to herself: ‘My God! ... Juliet, Ophelia ... there’s no doubt,
he means me ... And he still loves me as before …’”

Michael  Gielen  conducts  the  Vienna  Radio  Symphony  Orchestra  and
the Wiener Singakademie with Joachim Bissmeier as narrator and highly
acclaimed  soloists  Herbert  Lippert  and  Geert  Smits  in  an  absorbing
live  recording  that  took  place  on  7  December  2000  at  the  Vienna  
Concert Hall.