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[Met Performance] CID:274000

Opening Night {99}, General Manager: Anthony A. Bliss

Les Troyens
Metropolitan Opera House, Mon, September 26, 1983

Debut : Jessye Norman, Jane White, Robert Sanchez, Allan Glassman







Chapter

FUNDING:
Revival a gift of Francis Goelet and the Edith C. Blum Foundation

Review 1:

Review of Leighton Kerner in the Village Voice
‘Les Troyens” Has Landed

New York’s opera season began with a double-barreled vengeance. Within six crowded days, New York City Opera launched what was left of its 1983 session at the State Theater after an 11-week delay caused by the orchestra's strike, and the Metropolitan embarked on its already loudly heralded 100th season. (Just for the record, Concert Royal actually started the 1983-1984 New York opera season with an elegant revival of Handel's “Il pastor fido” at the Off-Broadway Marymount Manhattan Theater, on which I'll report along with City Operas upcomings-I-write production of Handel's “Alcina.”) It has turned out, then, that on top of a summer's wear and tear of labor strife and a long stretch of unemployment for its employees (mostly non-strikers), City Opera had to reopen not with its full due of fanfare but in the shadow of the Met's long awaited date with history.

And if comparisons of opening nights are in order, the Met began with a towering masterpiece, Berlioz's “Les Troyens,” in a mostly but not entirely splendid performance in a bits-and-pieces, often shabby production, while City Opera gave an exquisite if second-class work, Massenet's “Cendrillon,” a lively performance in a glittering, graceful production.

“Les Troyens,” is a long — four full hours of music excluding intermissions — far reaching grand opera that encompasses the Greeks' destruction of Troy, the escape of Aeneas and his followers, their rescue of Carthrage from a Numidian invasion, Aeneas's love affair with Carthage's widowed Queen Dido, the gods summoning of Aeneas from Carthage to found Rome, and Dido’s suicide. The source of Berlioz's libretto is almost entirely two books of Vergil's “Aeneid,” but the composer's equally strong devotion to Shakespeare is reflected in his adaptation of the "On such a night" dialogue of Lorenzo and Jessica in “The Merchant of Venice” for the Dido-Aeneas love duet, the magical "Nuit d'ivresse," in act four of the five-act opera. “Les Troyens,” for all its Vergilian spirit and, for that matter, Homeric violence of passion and action (Aeneas's first long solo describes in gory detail how two sea monsters devoured a priest who tried to set fire to the Trojan Horse), is possibly the most Shakespearean of operas in the way it draws fully rounded and vivid portraits of its most minor characters, such as the two cynical sentries in Carthage's harbor and the homesick sailor Hylas singing his haunting lament. Berlioz's closest rivals in that Shakespearean respect are Mussorgsky's “Boris Godunov” and “Khovanshcina” and Verdi's “La forza del destino” (even more than “Otello” and “Falstaff.”)

And the score of “Les Troyens” is a wonder of operatic aesthetics, as well as a particularly vivid example of dramatization through music. Although the work stands, along with “Tristan and Isolde” and the “Ring,” at the summit of music's Romantic Century, the basic stylistic character is neo-Baroque. Arias and duets follow the honored, pre-Mozart pattern of A-B-A; it's especially noticeable in the scenes involving Cassandra and her equally doomed lover Corebus. A listener coming to “Les Troyens” after several years away is perhaps astonished at the sheer length and formality of most of the numbers. Whereas “Tristan” flows from the beginning to the end of each act in one unbroken symphonic stream, “Les Troyens” uncut, as it is at the Met this season, consists of 52 discrete numbers, distributed among arias, ensembles, ballet divertissements, and, with the celebrated "Royal Hunt and Storm," extended pantomime. But so shrewd are Berlioz's juxtapositions of number with number that one is either entranced with the gradual progressions, as with the chain of quintet, septet with chorus, and duet on Dido's moonlit terrace in the fourth act, or jolted by the succession of events in the opera's first two (Trojan) acts. Moreover, the music ranges in character from the spectacular orchestral and choral effects focusing on the Trojan Horse, the Royal Hunt, and the concluding, massed curse on Aeneas's Rome to the melodic and harmonic intoxication of the terrace scene, where Berlioz, that master of the shimmering nocturne (“Nut's d'eté,” “Beatrice et Benedict,” and so on), seems to outdo himself.

Under the baton of James Levine, who has conducted highly praised concert performances of “Les Troyens” elsewhere, the Met's orchestra, many of the solo singers, and particularly the chorus did the work justice. Despite the publicity surrounding Placido Domingo, perhaps justified if belated second thoughts about taking on the role of Aeneas for the first time in his career, and not overlooking the successes of Tatiana Troyanos's first Met Dido and of Jessye Norman's sensational house debut as Cassandra, David Stivender's chorus walked off with highest honors on opening night. By my approximate count, the chorus had been expanded by 50 per cent to 120, but in the great reverberating ensemble numbers they sounded like five times that number. A good deal of the sonic effect probably stemmed from stage director Fabrizio Melano's capitalizing on the CoronationScene in John Dexter's production of “Le prophet” and spreading the choristers out on a stage apron extended beyond the proscenium's sides. But it was one of Melano's few happy decisions. One of his worst was to abandon the symbolic film sequence used when Nathaniel Merrill first produced “Les Troyens” for the Met 10 years ago, murky as it was, and to confront the audience with a musty black front curtain and suspended ring (Dido's crown, or an omen of the Met's next “Ring” cycle) and absolutely no action while the orchestra played the "Royal Hunt and Storm".

Meanwhile, back at the casting department. Yes, Domingo came through his first Aeneas endeavor with reputation intact. That reputation involves a voice of considerable stamina and steadiness; a knack for rich, gleaming tone production in the clutch; a heroic presence; more musicianship than tenors are usually credited with; an unfortunate tendency to sing too loudly when confidence wanes; and a limitation of top register that enforces downward transpositions. All these characteristics were in evidence the other night, yet he turned in a genuine star performance. (If you're thinking of hearing his Aeneas, his last performance, at least until the opera's return in February, is this Saturday night, October 8, according to his own statements to the press. The Met, however, still lists him as singing the following two performances, box-office business being box-office business. Troyanos's Dido was sturdily and movingly sung, and she acted in a viable, often powerful Greek-tragedy manner. Norman's Cassandra flung out her music in intensely heated waves, and her unusually (for these days) large body seemed never awkward but made to move or stand still as a convincing part of the drama. Jocelyne Taillon's cheese-grater of a mezzo as Anna nearly ruined the duets in which she participated, and Douglas Ahlstedt's Iopes was hardly less painful, but committed, well-polished singing came from Allan Monk as Corebus, Claudia Catania as Ascanius, Philip Creech as Hylas, and several others.

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Met careers

• James Levine [Conductor]
• Jessye Norman [Cassandra]
• Allan Monk [Coroebus]
• Plácido Domingo [Aeneas]
• Claudia Catania [Ascanius]
• Ara Berberian [Priam]
• Barbara Conrad [Hecuba]
• Robert Nagy [Helenus]
• Jane White [Andromache]
• Robert Sanchez [Astyanax]
• John Cheek [Panthus]
• Morley Meredith [Hector's Ghost]
• Vernon Hartman [Trojan Soldier]
• Tatiana Troyanos [Dido]
• Jocelyne Taillon [Anna]
• Paul Plishka [Narbal]
• Douglas Ahlstedt [Iopas]
• Julien Robbins [Mercury]
• Philip Creech [Hylas]
• John Darrenkamp [Trojan Soldier]
• James Courtney [Trojan Soldier]
• Jean Kraft [Cassandra's Ghost]
• Allan Glassman [Coroebus's Ghost]
• Linda Gelinas [Dance]
• Kimberly Graves [Dance]
• Deanne Lay [Dance]
• Antoinette Peloso [Dance]
• Marcus Bugler [Dance]
• Gary Cordial [Dance]
• Leonard Greco [Dance]
• Christopher Stocker [Dance]
• Fredrick Wodin [Dance]
• Fabrizio Melano [Stage Director]
• Gray Veredon [Choreographer]
• Peter Wexler [Designer]
• Gil Wechsler [Lighting Designer]