BERLIOZ : LES TROYENS

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 12 th of October 2014 at 6.03 - 10.15 pm
Sunday 3rd of February 2013 at 3.03 - 8.45 pm
Sunday 13th of November 2011 at 3.03 - 7.15 pm

OVERVIEW 
SYNOPSIS 
SYNOPSIS
LIBRETTO


2014

BERLIOZ: Les Troyens, an opera in five acts
Aeneas……………….Gregory Kunde
Coroebus…………….Fabio Capitanucci
Pantheus……………..Alexandre Duhamel
Narbal……………….Giacomo Prestia
Iopas………………...Shalva Mukeria
Ascanius……………..Paola Gardina
Cassandra…………....Anna Caterina Antonacci
Dido…………………Daniela Barcellona
Anna………………...Maria Radner
Hylas………………..Paolo Fanale
Priam………………..Samuel Ramey
Greek Chief…………Ernesto Panariello
Ghost of Hector……..Deyan Vatchkov
Helenus……………...Oreste Cosimo
La Scala Chorus & Orch/Antonio Pappano

 Synchronize our watches. We breach the walls of Ilias (code-name Troy) at 1800 hours on Sunday 12th of October. Our tank will be camouflaged as a horse constructed of timber. Several of our soldiers will be hidden inside. They will lead the first offensive after dark. The entire army will proceed at the double through the breach and the opened gates. The city will be ransacked and destroyed, and no prisoners taken.

Hector Berlioz: LES TROYENS (Act 1)
The characters are:
*Aeneas (Énée), son of Anchises and Venus (!), Trojan hero par excellence, who foolishly thinks the horse is blessed by Pallas Athene and should be placed in her temple, and then wisely  flees the conflagration, with his young son *Ascanius (soprano), and other brave pragmatic Trojans, to build a bigger and better city somewhere else. His circuitous route takes him from the Black Sea to NW Africa and then to Italy.

*Cassandra is a tragic princess and prophetess, predicting doom on Troy, and *Choroebos, her betrothed, is worried that she is slightly unhinged).

*Hecuba consort of King *Priam of Troy, who is father of Cassandra, *Polyxena, *Paris [non-appearing role, prudently keeps out of sight after all the trouble he has caused], *Hector [appearing only as a ghost], and *Helenus (a priest), not to be confused with the Spartan belle, *Helen, who keeps right out of sight.  Hector's wife *Andromakhe and their son *Astynax are speechless over all the horror and can only mime their parts. *Pantheus is another priest, and a friend of Aeneas.

Don't expect to see the priest Laokoön throwing his spear at the hated wooden horse gifted by the Greeks {"I fear Daneans even when they are bearing gifts" Vergil, Aeneid}, and then being killed with his sons, by two sea serpents; but Aeneas gives a graphic account of it. Listen for the stirring Trojan march as they drag the horse in through the hole in the wall they make.

Hector Berlioz, Les Troyens (The Trojans)
Act 2: The destruction of Troy
Aeneas is asleep in his palatial mansion, when the ghost of Hector appears to him and cries: "Son of Venus, get thee to Italy". This call is frequent in the opera; he is commissioned to found a new nation in the land of the jackboot (funny thing, Aotearoa likewise looks like a long boot viewed upside down, and Aeneas missed his chance to arrive here before the Maaori Polynesians and the British imperialists laid claim to it).
   Pantheus the priest informs Aeneas that the Grecian horse has belched forth enemy soldiers, who have opened the gates to admit the marauding hordes seeking hoards of treasure. It is going to be a night of raping, slaughtering, pillaging, raising hell, and razing the city. King Priam and Troy are both getting the sack. Never mind, it all takes place off stage ["Loud noises and distant cries"].
   Ascanius  Aeneas-son (played by a girl-soprano) reports on the destructive fires burning down palaces. Khorebus drags Aeneas off to defend the citadel.
   At the altar of Vesta-Kybele, within the palace of Priam, the priestesses and other women are bewailing the fate of their city. Cassandra the prophetess tells them that her beloved Khorebus has died a hero, while Aeneas has done the noble thing and fled, with Priam's treasure in tow. When a Greek captain and his men come bursting in, Cassandra and the women commit mass suicide, their last words being "Italy, Italy".

Act 3: The Trojans at Carthage
After the gloom of Troy, the blazing sun lights up the stage, at the palace of the widow-queen Dido, in Carthage (Phoenician Qart Hadsht, "Newtown"). Great festivity, celebrating seven years of occupying northern Africa. She sits with her sister Anna and her minister Narbal (and her Tyrian poet Iopas is hovering around). Builders, sailors, and farm-workers pay homage to her. The Trojans arrive: first young Ascanius, then Pantheus, and  Aeneas (in disguise). They magnanimously offer to defeat her foes (Iarbas and his Numidians). Everybody suddenly forgets what great losers Trojans are, and the scratch Lions team goes off to take on all the blacks.

Act 4
    We have all heard the "Royal Hunt and Storm" interlude (Beecham used to go through it like a dose of his family's little liver pills charging through the system).
    Aeneas and Dido are on the chase (who or what is being chased or not chaste is clouded in mystery). The clouds burst and the pair get caught in a downpour. They go into a cave to get out of the wet (dancing as they go, like Fred and Ginger, no doubt). Forest nymphs appear, disheveled and screaming the theme-song: "Italy". Satyrs and fauns dance wildly amid lightning and thunder, waving flaming branches from a tree struck by lightning.
    Well, that's what the composer put in his stage instructions (remember, like Wagner, he wrote his own libretto). We shall see what the director chooses to do with that. (He could bring in Gene Kelly, "Singin' in the Rain", for example).
    But a veil is drawn over what happened in the cave (just as it was when I studied Ovid's Latin version at Fort Street school when I was fifteen). But no good will come of it. Queen Dido is hooked (and will eventually be forsooked).
    We are back at the palace, for a concert of ballet (bring on the Egyptian dancing girls and the nubile Nubian slaves) and song (from the Tyrian minstrel Iopas) and tale-telling. “Tell me that one about the fate of Andromakhe”, Dido says to Aeneas, and to her horror she learns that Hector's widow has finally succumbed to the love of Pyrrhus, her captor, and has joined him on the throne of Epirus!
    Young Ascanius helps his father's courtship of Dido by removing her dead husband's ring from her finger. All slip away leaving them in the moonlight, crooning their love duet: "Oh night of intoxication and infinite ecstasy".
    The messenger god Mercury/Hermes suddenly appears with a singing-telegram for Aeneas: "ITALY STOP ITALY STOP ITALY STOP". No, "Go". "Yes, but you don't go", as the Major-General said to W.S. Gilbert's not a happy lot of policemen.

Berlioz, Les Troyens, Act 5 (in 3 scenes).
Scene 1. In the harbour at night, on one of the Trojan ships, Hylas the sailor boy sings a sad song about his homeland. (We really do have to wonder how the Trojans could have constructed a fleet of ships while they were locked inside their besieged city. Never mind. Maybe they stole some of the Greek vessels.) The Trojan chiefs are preparing for departure, and that infernal word "Italy" is coming up out of nowhere again. Aeneas desperately does not want to leave Dido, but again it is fate. The ghosts of Priam, Hector, Cassandra, and Khoirobos give him a shove, while Dido tries to drag him back; but he embarks, goose-stepping to the Trojan march, shouting the fateful name of the country of his destiny.
Scene 2. In the palace, Dido begs her sister Anna to intercede with Aeneas, but Anna knows that it is inevitable. Dido enters into her mad scene, ordering her people to pursue the traitors, but it is too late. As you do at the end of a love affair, she is going to burn everything belonging to the man who jilted her (his pajamas and toothbrush and whatever).
Scene 3. When the pyre is built she mounts it herself, bearing the sword of Aeneas, which she plunges into her breast, after predicting that Hannibal ("Ba'al's grace") will eventually arise and avenge her. A vision of triumphant Rome is presented to her as she dies amid the curses of the Carthaginians against the Trojans.

   What a feast of beautiful and stirring music Hector Berlioz has regaled us with, both lyrical (that exquisite love duet in Act 4) and dramatic (Cassandra's outpourings).
   I own two audio recordings of this (Colin Davis 1969 on vinyl, Charles Dutoit on compact silver disc, with Deborah Voigt) and one video performance (John Eliot Gardiner, with Gregory Kunde and Susan Graham, and that is what the above commentary refers to; it is all done with mirrors, by the way).
   Poor Hector Berlioz never saw a complete performance: he experienced The Trojans at Carthage (Acts 3 to 5), but not The Fall of Troy (Acts 1 and 2).

2013
BERLIOZ: Les Troyens, an opera in five acts
Priam............................ Julien Robbins
Hecuba......................... Theodora Hanslowe
Cassandra.................... Deborah Voigt
Dido............................. Susan Graham
Anna............................ Karen Cargill
Aeneas......................... Bryan Hymel
Iopas............................ Eric Cutler
Coroebus...................... Dwayne Croft
Narbal/Mercury............ Kwangchul Youn
Ascanio........................ Julie Boulianne
Hylas............................ Paul Appleby
Helenus........................ Eduardo Valdes
Trojan Soldier.............. Troy Cook
Panthus........................ Richard Bernstein
Soldiers........................ Paul Corona, James Courtney
Hector's ghost............. David Crawford
Metropolitan Opera Chorus & Orch/Fabio Luisi REVIEW (Huff)
REVIEW (NYT)

2011
BERLIOZ: Les Troyens, an opera in five acts
Berlioz had admired Virgil since childhood and for his most ambitious work took the poet's epic poem The Aeneid. He was motivated in this vast project by Liszt's mistress, the Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, during visits to Weimar Berlioz made during the 1850s
Aeneas.......................... Ben Heppner
Dido............................. Michelle DeYoung
Cassandra..................... Petra Lang
Anna............................. Sara Mingardo
Corebus........................ Peter Mattei
Narbal.......................... Stephen Milling
Iopas............................ Kenneth Tarver
Hylas............................ Toby Spence
Hector's Ghost.............. Orlin Anastassov
Panthus......................... Tigran Martirossian
Ascanius....................... Isabelle Cals
Priam............................ Alan Ewing
Hecuba......................... Guang Yang
Trojan Sentries.............. Andrew Greenan, Roderick Earle
Helenus......................... Bülent Bezdüz
Soldier/Mercury............ Leigh Melrose
Greek Captain............... Mark Stone
London Symphony Chorus & Orch/Colin Davis
(LSO Live LSO 0010)