Les Troyens

 

Conductor...............James Levine
Production..............Fabrizio Melano

Cassandra...............Jessye Norman [Debut]
Coroebus................Allan Monk
Aeneas..................Plácido Domingo
Dido....................Tatiana Troyanos 

 

This performance of Berlioz' Les Troyens at the Metropolitan Opera is from 1983.  Jessye Norman made her Met debut.  There were performances in the run where Jessye played Dido and someone else Cassandra.  She is spectacular as Cassandra.  No one else approaches her.  It is wonderful to see it again.

Berlioz isn't doing what anyone else was doing at his time.  Not Musically and not theatrically.  It is wise to notice he wrote his own libretto.  He loved Virgil's Aenead and based the opera on it. I know the French always treated him with disrespect and perhaps still do.  After all they were the ones who staged the Dido scenes in a mental hospital.  I prefer some semblance of historical setting which we certainly have here.  Both the Met and San Francisco Operas staged it in the last decade, and both achieved triumphs.  But perhaps this one is the greatest of all.  I love it. 

The horse doesn't seem to look like a horse. Cassandra and all the other Trojan women commit suicide at the end of Act II. The effect of this production is just as it should be.  How does all this pompous singing translate to an insane asylum? It's designed to bring status to Dido.  I love this opera and this is a wonderful version. 

Les Troyens from the Paris Opera

I am viewing a film of Berlioz' Les Troyens from the Paris opera.

Conductor:  Philippe Jordan
Production: Dmitri Tcherniakov

The Trojans at Troy

Aeneas: Brandon Jovanovich
Cassandra: Stéphanie d'Oustrac
Coroebus, Cassandra's fiance: Stéphane Degout, bass

Something like a movie marquee announces in French and English that the Greeks have abandoned their positions around Troy, and the war is over.  The streets fill with celebrators.  This is a regie production of Berlioz' Les Troyens from the Paris opera.  The characters are introduced with text at the top of the screen.  Priam looks a lot like Generalissimo Franco.  The billboard clarifies the action as perhaps never before.

I found Act I very coherent.  We don't see a horse, but the death of Laocoon is vividly described.  Cassandra warns and laments, but no one listens.

Where Act II should begin, we see soldiers with automatic rifles enter and shake hands with Aeneas.  Hmm.  So are we to believe he is a traitor?  His wife is dead and sends him a note explaining she is ashamed by his betrayal.  This is unclear.  Perhaps I have completely misunderstood.  His own people still seem to honor him.

Priam and his wife are shown dead.  Stéphanie d'Oustrac is wonderfully intense.  The men all head off and leave the women to die or be taken into slavery.  They choose death, and Cassandra goes up in flames.  I seem to remember a play by Euripides called The Trojan Women which describes a somewhat different fate for them.

This part of the opera is well presented.

The Trojans at Carthage

Dido: Ekaterina Semenchuk
Aeneas: Brandon Jovanovich
Anna: Aude Extremo
Narbal: Christian Van Horn

A title announces that we are in a Psychological Center for Victims of the War.  The set looks a bit like a hotel lobby.  This is my third insane asylum opera after Carmen (also Tcherniakov) and Oberon.  This part of the staging has nothing to do with either Berlioz's opera or the staging of the first half.  Yes, people in war are often in need of psychiatric care, but the opera is about the triumph of Rome, not mental illness.  Perhaps it is better to just listen.  The audio is gorgeous.  This staging is definitely boo worthy.

I may never have realized before what a great opera for chorus this is.  Dido enters and the chorus holds up a homemade sign saying "Tu es notre Reine." [You are our queen.]  Aeneas's son holds up his cell phone to show pictures of Troy to Dido.  Ach!  One is interested in the translation because nothing in the visuals is giving you a clue.  I missed before that these people of Carthage are from the eastern Mediterranean, just like the Trojans.  That explains a lot.

A black guy comes in and Aeneas tries to beat him up.  Weird.  The essential feature of an insane asylum is the keepers who now enter in red vests and lead everyone out.  It is hard to imagine any other tenor besides Jovanovich playing this scene.  I'm determined to watch it to the end, but it gets goofier and goofier.

In Act IV the patients are in a circle, and enact a story.  They hold up signs to indicate where they are and what is going on.  The title of the story is "La Chasse Royale."  Perhaps you will recall that Dido and Aeneas go out into the country on a hunt.  "The forest" is next.  The audience for these signs appears to be Dido alone.  We have nymphs and naiads and satyrs.  When the sign says "The marriage of Dido" [you're not required to trust my translations], Aeneas is handed a bow and arrow which he waves around.  He shoots Dido's companion and Dido faints.  The arrow is theater, and the companion is fine.  We were wondering why they would give a mental patient a weapon.

Dido goes back to her room, and a ping pong table appears.  Two keepers in red vests then proceed to play ping pong and sing about triumphing over the Africans. These are Dido's advisers?  Oy.  They plot the marriage of Dido to Aeneas.  There has been nothing that even remotely resembles ballet.

This director seems to be under the impression that psychiatric treatment consists of arranging fantasy scenarios for the patients.  Problems arise because the patients react as though they were real.  This doesn't correspond to any therapeutic method I have heard of.  In a nuthouse apparently anything can happen.

When everyone else has left the stage, Dido and Aeneas sing a very gorgeous version of "Nuit d'ivresse," one of the most beautiful duets in all of opera.  The ending is kind of cool.

Why Do We Go to the Opera?

👍🏻
Conductor: Donald Runnicles
Production: David McVicar

Troy:
Cassandra: Anna Caterina Antonacci
Aeneas: Bryan Hymel *
Coroebus: Brian Mulligan

Carthage:
Dido: Susan Graham
Aeneas: Bryan Hymel
Anna: Sasha Cooke
Narbal: Christian Van Horn

For this, oh yes, for this.

Hector Berlioz' Les Troyens was a work of love.  Virgil's Aenead was one of his favorite things from childhood.  You can tell this because he composes everything.  He can't bear to leave anything out.  He didn't seem to care how hard it was to get such a long opera produced.

Nuit D'Ivresse

This is difficult to choose.

Susan Graham and Gregory Kunde seem very much in tune with each other.



But when they're on, no one makes music together better than Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna.



The classic version is this one with Tatiana Troyanos and Placido Domingo.  They sing big.  This was my introduction to Berlioz' Les Troyens. This film is a shortened version.



So I offer this one with Verrett and Gedda. Perhaps you have a favorite.

Les Troyens in HD

Conductor...............Fabio Luisi
Production..............Francesca Zambello

Part I: La Prise de Troie

Cassandra...............Deborah Voigt
Coroebus................Dwayne Croft Aeneas..................Bryan Hymel
Ascanius................Julie Boulianne Priam...................Julien Robbins Hecuba..................Theodora Hanslowe

Part II: Les Troyens à Carthage

Dido....................Susan Graham
Anna....................Karen Cargill
Narbal..................Kwangchul Youn
Iopas...................Eric Cutler
Ascanius................Julie Boulianne
Panthus.................Richard Bernstein
Aeneas..................Bryan Hymel

We liked this picture because the right side of the dome shot, seen at the very end of the opera, is the interior of the Pantheon in Rome.  Berlioz is assigning to his characters the ability to see into the future, in this case the fact that ultimately Rome conquers Carthage.  Hector Berlioz loved Virgil's Aenead and created his own libretto for his masterpiece Les Troyens, simulcast today live from the Metropolitan Opera.

This quote from Wikipedia is interesting. "In 1969, Bärenreiter Verlag of Kassel, Germany, published a Critical Edition of Les Troyens, containing all the compositional material left by Berlioz. The preparation of this critical edition was the work of Hugh Macdonald, whose Cambridge University doctoral dissertation this was. The tendency since then has been to perform the opera complete." This in spite of the fact that earlier in the same article it says, "In this [earlier] published score, [Berlioz] introduced a number of optional cuts which have often been adopted in subsequent productions."  We liked especially the idea, not being ourselves French, that all the ballets would be cut.

It is a huge opera that can be produced only in the largest opera houses.  I think it would work to do a cut down version using only the final three acts, actually the format for the original production called Les Troyens à Carthage. Perhaps in this format we would get to see it more often.  For my taste these are the parts I enjoy; the lyricism, the love duet, the fatal love affair.  I could live without a crowd of women stabbing themselves.

Because we are living in the prime of Susan Graham, an artist of wonderful gifts, especially in the French repertoire.  This is the part we would want to see over and over.  To quote Joyce Didonato, "Berlioz and Susan Graham--a match made in heaven."

The replacement tenor who sang Énée, Bryan Hymel, was incredible.  We were definitely hoping to get to hear more of him.  He received the loudest ovation, both during the opera for his aria in Act V and at the final bows.

Kudos to everyone, especially the chorus which is in virtually every scene.