Joyce DiDonato and Antonio Pappano

Musical tales of boundless passion and madness come to life. Hector Berlioz explored his obsessive love in the Symphonie Fantastique. Joyce DiDonato sings Into the Fire, Jake Heggie’s bittersweet song cycle about the French artist Camille Claudel, whose affair with her associate Auguste Rodin proved to be her undoing. Such a programme calls for a conductor who knows how to deliver drama in a perfectly measured way. Sir Antonio Pappano manages to lead the Concertgebouw Orchestra on this emotional roller coaster without going off the rails.

Camille Claudel

The American composer Jake Heggie tells the moving story of Camille Claudel, whose passionate relationship with the eminent Auguste Rodin would prove to be her undoing. After a series of scandals, her family locked her away in an asylum. Heggie, who has garnered acclaim for his emotional songs and operas, has an elderly Claudel look back on her eventful life in Into the Fire.

Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique

No less riveting is Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique, in which the composer used his own searing infatuation as a model for a colourful orchestral narrative that ends with opium-induced hallucinations of a macabre witches’ dance.