Metropolitan Opera Archives

Jessye Norman was reported to have been impressive as Cassandra in the open*ing performances of "Les Troyens" at the Metropolitan Opera this season, but Dido is a richer role, and on Wednesday night, when Miss Norman switched parts, she created a Carthaginian Queen who was both regal and vulnerable. It was a subtle and affecting dramatic portrait that made the production's abstract metallic sets and often bizarre costumes seem stark indeed in contrast.

She began as noble and authoritative, but then turned inward, became troubled, her voice melancholic and slightly edgy. By the final scenes, the Queen had turned into an Ophelia, writhing with inner pain accompanied by the outbursts and pants of the score. Her farewell aria was fluid and seductive, suggesting in its timbre both sensuous pleasures and death.

Here Carthage is undermined by the passion that the Trojan Aeneas awakes within the Queen, just as in the first part of the opera the Trojans are undermined by taking a wooden animal within their gates; both endings are all the more tragic because they begin as celebrations. Miss Norman never allowed any of this to remain mere myth. She turned it into an immediate and personal history.

Next to such a performance, William Lewis — who has taken over the role of Aeneas from Placido Domingo — had to have been left in the shadow, even in the haunting duet, "Nuit d'ivresse." But his was, for the most part a sturdy, well-executed performance, seeming just a bit weary and strained from its difficulties in the final act.

Substituting for Tatiana Troyanos, who was ill, Gwynn Cornell as Cassandra was almost the complement of Miss Norman's Dido. Miss Cornell may have, at times, made her prophetic pose too hard and strident, but the urgency and passion was effective nevertheless, and came through to the listener if not to the Trojans.

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