Berlioz

Ozawa often spoke about feeling liberation in the music of Berlioz.

She canceled the rest of the run, then moved on to Munich, where she had a long rehearsal period before she was supposed to sing her first Didon in Berlioz’s “Les Troyens.”

The conductor allegedly hit William Thomas after the bass singer left the podium on the wrong side during a concert last week at the Festival Berlioz in La Cote-Saint-Andre, southeastern France.

Bruno Messina, the festival's artistic director of the Festival Berlioz, said in a statement that he was "devastated by the incident", but felt it was important that Wednesday's show took place.

"The first step was to read orchestration treatises from Rimsky-Korsakov or Berlioz and understand the rules I wanted to follow and to not follow and to break. It was a very humbling process, for sure."