No. 185. Gigantic Berlioz. He needed a break from tilling the visual fields and felt that a limited sojourn in music might be restorative. To that end, he decided he would try to learn the music of the French arch-romantic composer, Hector Berlioz (1803-1869). The pursuit swiftly turned from a dalliance into something close to an obsession. He hadn't known much of Berlioz's music--just the Roman Carnival Overture and the infamous and inescapable Symphonie Fantastique--but he now intended to learn it all, even the composer's almost indigestible opera, Les Troyens (The Trojans)--which was eight acts long in its original incarnation..