Sorry, I am a bit late posting this one (like, exactly a week late -- bad, bad, BAD!)
In the world of opera there are a handful of monumental works which are performed relatively rarely and only in very well-equipped theatres. Facing this idea, my mind automatically shouts "Wagner"! But there are others. A few years back, the Canadian Opera Company staged Prokofiev's astounding operatic version of War and Peace, and I still treasure memories of that powerful performance.
Last Saturday, thanks to the Met Live in HD at the Cineplex, I got a first opportunity to see a live performance of Les Troyens by Hector Berlioz. This is an even rarer bird than the great Wagner music dramas, and certainly not for lack of musical or dramatic worthiness. When the entire opera was staged complete in Glasgow in the 1930s, the English musicologist Sir Donald Tovey acclaimed it as "a gigantic and convincing masterpiece of music drama." I see no reason to disagree.
So why is a live performance of Les Troyens such a rare event? Well, think of any of the Wagner Ring Cycle. Here you have a comparably-sized orchestra (although not identical), and comparably strong singers are required. But Berlioz has no less than seventeen named singing roles, plus two silent acting roles, and requires in addition a huge chorus (capable of dividing into sub-groups) and a corps de ballet. This is an epic opera in the French tradition, so the role of the ballet is sizable, as they appear in at least four different scenes. The work is also traditionally French in its adoption of a subject from classical literature. And not least of its challenges is the requirements for multiple settings, requiring frequent scene changes.
Berlioz adapted his own libretto from Books II and IV of The Aeneid, Virgil's epic poem about the life and adventures of Aeneas and his mission. The opera is split into 5 acts, with the first two subtitled La prise de Troie ("The Fall of Troy") and the last three known as Les Troyens à Carthage ("The Trojans at Carthage"). The division is also suitable as the first part contains the scenes of war, while the second part unfolds the doomed love of Dido, Tyrian Queen of Carthage, for Aeneas.
So, how did the Metropolitan Opera fare in tackling this massive challenge? For a certainty, they are one of the few theatres in the world which could successfully do so on their own in-house resources. Not least of those resources is conductor Fabio Luisi, who confirmed his gifts by holding the entire massive structure together from start to finish with scarcely any apparent difficulties. Both the Metropolitan Opera Chorus and the Met Ballet acquitted themselves well in their many numbers. The set designs of Maria Bjørnson sensibly used simplified scenic elements rather than attempt any sort of literal depiction. Some worked better than others -- I found the fussy uneven flooring of Dido's royal dais distracting, on the one hand, but the massive riveted metal floor of the first two acts created a clear feel of a fortress of war even if it was anachronistic.
The heroine of the first two acts is Cassandra, portrayed with great depth and perception by Deborah Voigt. Cassandra refused the advances of Apollo, and he cursed her by giving her an infallible gift of prophecy but ensuring that nobody would ever believe what she said. Voigt formed a fine partnership with Dwayne Croft as her fiance, Coroebus. Their duet of love and farewell was one of the energetic highlights of the first act. The first of Voigt's two great solo moments came at the end of the first act when the clashing of arms prompts the people to stop hauling the wooden horse into Troy. How quickly hope swells in Cassandra's heart, only to be as quickly dashed when the people resume their procession towards their own doom. At the end of the second scene, with what power Voigt summons all the women of Troy to join her in mass suicide rather than submit to the Greeks -- and with what scorn she dismisses the handful of women who fear to follow her.
The heroine of the second part is, most unusually, a mezzo-soprano, although the part is written dauntingly high for such a voice. Perhaps Berlioz, like Wagner, was composing for a voice type that only existed in his ideal imagination. At any rate, Susan Graham acted the role of Dido very convincingly for the most part, although her mood swings at the end of her final scene with Aeneas were perhaps a little too epic in size -- and became bathetic as a result. On the other hand, her death scene was nobility personified, just as it needs to be. Her voice for the most part coped well with the demands made, but by the end began to sound a bit tired.
The hero of the entire opera is Aeneas, and this tenor role ranks right along with Siegfried as one of the mightiest summits of music for the tenor. Indeed, it is often sung by Wagnerian heldentenors, and with good reason. Canadian Jon Vickers counted this as one of his signature roles, alongside Tristan, and Ben Heppner is another Canadian known for the part. So Bryan Hymel was moving in exalted company indeed. He acquitted himself nobly. His very first solo, the narration of the horrifying death of the priest Laocoön, is delivered at full throttle the instant he runs onto the stage, and he goes on to major solos and ensembles in almost every scene thereafter. I felt his finest moment was in his lyrical love duet with Dido in Act IV, O nuit d'ivresse ("O night of ecstasy"), where his high notes floated out effortlessly and lightly.
Most of the staging choices in this involved and complex drama were effective -- but there were a couple of moments that only aggravated. One was the decision to have the dancers lie on the stage in embracing pairs during O nuit d'ivresse. This was totally unnecessary -- Graham and Hymel told us everything we needed to know about their love by their acting. It was also distracting, as one or another of the dancers would shift position -- apparently deliberately -- each time there was a break in the singing. Each such movement yanked focus right away from the singers. On the other hand, the use of lamps carried in glass bowls to illuminate the faces of the Trojan ghosts from below added a very convincingly supernatural look to their faces.
There were many other excellences in this production, and on the whole they far outweighed the faults I found. Yes, the opera lasted five and a half hours with two extended intermissions, but it was well worth every minute of the time for me.
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