Les Troyens

Pappano Antonacci Capitanucci Hymel Westbroek Sherratt Hipp Senator Lloyd Stephen Kim Holland Kim Jakobski Grice Park Clarke White Lyon

Royal Opera Chorus Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Virgil\’s Epic of Troy & Carthage opens: “arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris…” which I remember from my O’Level Latin roughly translates as “I sing to you of arms and of a man of Troy who fled her coasts for Italy…”

Hector Berlioz was more inspired by the great poet than I managed to be as a schoolboy. This poem of war and love and duty haunted Berlioz for the rest of his life and finally in 1858-9 led him to compose the single greatest epic of Opera outside the those operas composed by Wagner and collectively known as ‘The Ring’  – and which isn’t as some might suppose an early musical adventure in Mordor and the land of Hobbits.

Les Troyens wasn’t that favourably received in Paris and indeed its earliest performances were of either Acts III to V – the story of Dido and Aeneas or Acts I and II which see the fall of Troy from the doomed perspective of Cassandra’s un-believed and unbeleivable predictions. I believe Hector Berlioz never saw it performed as a single opera. And probably and most certainly undeservedly it languished for over half a century in the vaults of unperformable and unsung.

The new production of this unwieldy giant of a grand composition is a master class. I might complain about aspects of the set and staging or the costumes but not of the underlying interpretation and singing. This is a piece of performance art with utter conviction and it grips from start to finish. And in this production there are great performances to enjoy and to enthrall but two over-towering all – Anna Caterina Antonacci ‘s Cassandra and Anne-Marie Westbroek’s Dido.

Berlioz’s opera is full of epic concepts – long orchestral interludes that are crafted like mini-symphonies and ballet music and entire ballet scenes provide narrative action over and above that found in the libretto & vocal framework. You can see this most obviously in the music for the hunting scene which captures the growing love between Dido and Aeneas preparing us for the rapture of the love scene that will follow. All of this is intentional since Berlioz wrote both the libretto and stage directions himself. Similarly the chorus is given a much more prominent position than often in opera and the arias and recitative are now welded into long continuous lines of music. Perhaps this stylistically is best exemplified by the love duet Susan Graham as dido and Graham Kunde as Aeneas

The ballets in the ROH production are beautifully danced and as beautifully choreographed. They seem in this sprawling work to add something to the epic sensibility of the work. The great love duet in Act IV brings tears to the eyes and although Bryan Hymel came late to the production he has made an impression with this Aeneas. Ed Lyon sang the great aria given to Hylas with absolute sincerity and the purest vocal line. Who wouldn’t weep tears for a lost homeland when you hear that remarkable aria? And Antonio Pappano conducted with certain touch and made music of genius from Berlioz’s genius.

There were things I disliked. The city in miniature in Act III made for a messy dramaturgy. The vaguely Ruritanian costumes in Troy in Acts I and II weren’t that well conceived. Troy’s metal walls didn’t convince but the horse was great and the metal spectre of a Roman soldier in the finale really worked superbly.

I was deeply unsure about a long night with Berlioz. I thought it might end in tears and it did but in tears of joy and pleasure. This is a night I will remember and I don’t think I will ever think of Troy or Carthage again without thinking of this night in Covent Garden and the magic of that long love duet which Berlioz cleverly crafted from the penultimate scene in Merchant of Venice between Jessica and Lorenzo. The lines not set of course were those which drew Berlioz to use this poignant set piece for the lovers:

In such a night
Stood Dido with a willow in her hand
Upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love
To come again to Carthage.

In the end the doomed lovers must make their choices. Duty and Destiny call Aeneas away from love to Italy. The father of Rome makes his choice and his choice sows the seed of a greater historical rivlalry know as the Punic Wars – fought between Rome and Carthage –  and which more than any single event shape Roman consciousness and her model of Empire.

But although Virgil and Berlioz see the sweep of this bigger epic story, it is the fact that, as in the Iliad, the diminuendo of ordinary love and ordinary life is carried along in the flood of history that gives these epic poems their personal humanity of scale. This is what we miss in Milton’s Paradise Lost. And it’s there in the heart of ordinary experience that Berlioz, like Virgil and Homer, locates emotions and feelings with which we all can share. Thus the poignancy of Hylas’ evocation of loneliness for a lost homeland; a past irretrievably lost that can only be re-imagined in our in dreams but whose power haunts our present and often shapes our future. That is after all why we all like stories – and why we all tell stories.  They are the threads that knit us to life’s wider canvass but also make the detail of our small lives important in the overall scheme of things. Its our unknown lives and dreams that stand in Everyman’s unremebered pasts and dreams. And it’s Everyman’s hopes and dreams that add the texture and depth that turn mere history into Epic.

See this version of Hylas aria in Act V Hylas sings his lonely haunting evocation of Troy