The MET Orchestra & Joyce DiDonato

Conductor Leonard Bernstein called Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique “the first psychedelic music trip.” With its depictions of an opium overdose, hallucinations of murder, and a Witches’ Sabbath, it’s one of the greatest orchestral showpieces. There’s more Berlioz drama in selections from his grand opera Les Troyens—based on Virgil’s epic Aeneid—including a royal hunt, a violent thunderstorm, and the heartbreaking farewell aria of the tragic Carthaginian Queen Dido.