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[Met Performance] CID:314780



Les Troyens
Metropolitan Opera House, Thu, December 16, 1993

Debut : Françoise Pollet, Ilya Ostrovski, Rachel Schuette, Dean Dufford







Les Troyens received eight performances this season.
Chapter

FUNDING:
Revival a gift of Francis Goelet

Review 1:

Tim Page in Newsday
Berlioz’ Glorious “Les Troyens”

The word "masterpiece" has been so debased that one is a little hesitant to use it these days. Cultural conservatives claim the term for virtually everything written before they were born while the chattering classes apply it promiscuously to whatever happens to be fashionable — and just a little “outre” — at the moment.

Still, I'm going to call Berlioz' "Les Troyens" a masterpiece — a vast, extraordinary hybrid of fervid Romanticism and high Classicism that has all the passion of the one and all the elevation and composure of the other. The Metropolitan Opera's 1973 production, revived Thursday night for the first time in 10 years, has its flaws, but anybody who cares about music, theater, history, literature and a half-dozen other disciplines — anybody who cares anything about the life of the mind and the highest standards of western civilization — should immediately plan to spend the requisite five hours at the Met before "Les Troyens" vanishes from the repertory for another decade. This grave, stately summary of a lifetime of meditation, from one of the 19th Century's most original musical thinkers, is like nothing else in the world.

Time and again, a listener is startled by both the opera's profound rootedness (in Virgil's "Aeneid," in the music of Gluck, in the milieu of the Parisian 1860s) and its absolute unpredictability (who could possibly have imagined that rapturous, mysterious, moonstruck septet built upon little more than a repeated middle C?). The academic mind will never succeed in fully explaining Berlioz; there are technical "errors" throughout his scores that would disqualify him from any conservatory-sponsored award. Indeed, sometimes one thinks he became a great composer by sheer industry and force of will, because he simply would not allow it to be otherwise. But he succeeded — and "Les Troyens" is the glorious proof.

The Met's production is very much of its time. Nothing dates faster than yesterday's radicalism and this is dated indeed — a weird sort of abstracted representationalism (the Trojan Horse looks like a gilded Triceratops); leather thongs and flashes of buttocks just right for a discreet evening at the Mine Shaft, circa 1977; lattices, staircases, scrims and tinsel. I didn't like it very much but, swept along by Berlioz' score, I found it easy to forgive.

The singers approached "Les Troyens" with appropriate respect — nobody did any grandstanding, yet one had the sense that all were out to surpass themselves. Maria Ewing, although suffering from a cold, established herself, once again, as a superlative singing actress as the noble Dido. Francoise Pollet, in her house debut, sang the role of Cassandra with robust tone, a close attention to line and language, and a palpable air of tragedy and possession. Tenor Gary Lakes will never be mistaken for a particularly subtle interpreter; that said, and discounting some unfortunate bawling in the first act, he proved a much more sensitive Aeneas than we had any right to expect. Thomas Hampson brought his usual dapper ease to the role of Coroebus and there was strong support from Wendy White, Paul Plishka, Susan Graham; Philip Creech, Donald Kaasch, Julian Robbins and Jane Shaulis, among others. James Levine led the Met orchestra and chorus in a propulsive but beautifully detailed performance. If you attend only one opera performance this year, let it be "Les Troyens."

Search by season: 1993-94

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Met careers

• James Levine [Conductor]
• Françoise Pollet [Cassandra]
• Thomas Hampson [Coroebus]
• Gary Lakes [Aeneas]
• Susan Graham [Ascanius]
• Jeffrey Wells [Priam]
• Jane Shaulis [Hecuba]
• John Horton Murray [Helenus]
• Jane White [Andromache]
• Ilya Ostrovski [Astyanax]
• Julien Robbins [Panthus]
• Terry Cook [Hector's Ghost]
• Kim Josephson [Trojan Soldier]
• Maria Ewing [Dido]
• Wendy White [Anna]
• Paul Plishka [Narbal]
• Donald Kaasch [Iopas]
• Yanni Yannissis [Mercury]
• Philip Creech [Hylas]
• James Courtney [Trojan Soldier]
• Christopher Schaldenbrand [Coroebus's Ghost]
• Deanne Lay [Dance]
• Marcus Bugler [Dance]
• Joseph Fritz [Dance]
• Rachel Schuette [Dance]
• Ricardo Costa [Dance]
• Christopher Stocker [Dance]
• Linda Gelinas [Dance]
• Antoinette Peloso [Dance]
• Dean Dufford [Dance]
• Nathaniel Merrill [Director]
• Gray Veredon [Choreographer]
• Peter Wexler [Designer]
• Gil Wechsler [Lighting Designer]
• Fabrizio Melano [Stage Director]