delusion and desire
by Douglas
Messerli
Hector Berlioz (libretto, after
Vergil’s Aeneid, and music) Les troyens / a Metropolitan opera H.D. live recording broadcast,
January 5, 2013
As scholars and critics have long
pointed out, Hector Berlioz’s Les troyens—although
written as a single long work (the performance I saw yesterday ran for about 5
½ hours)—is really two different operas in one. In fact, Berlioz never saw a
production of the entire work as he had conceived it during his lifetime, since
the companies of the day felt that they were not up to producing the whole, and
demanded it be broken into two parts: La
prise de Troie and Les troyens à
Carthage. The first part languished in obscurity until 1957 when London’s
Convent Garden produced the first full-length production of the work.
Certainly, what I witnessed, the first
Metropolitan opera production of this work in ten years, felt like it broke
into two, perhaps even three parts. The first is a far darker and less
exploratory work, which, however, through the powerful soprano performance of
Deborah Voight as Cassandra and the baritone voiced Dwayne Croft, as her lover,
Coroebus, had many powerful moments. Cassandra, the daughter of Priam, is in
the strange position of being ostracized by her own people for her dire
predictions, and possibly even losing the love of Coroebus. Much of those two
acts are spent on just those dark premonitions, which arouse powerful emotions,
despite the fact that one wonders, at times, if she can see into the future,
why Cassandra maintains her position that Coroebus should flee; surely his fate
is written that he will die in Troy. Perhaps that is why, ultimately, she
agrees to remain in the city and marry him, despite her belief it will end in
their death.
One of the loveliest moments of this first part is the sad arrival of
Andromache, Hector’s wife, now a widow. The chorus, which is much at the center
of La prise de Troie, mourns Hector’s
murder with her and her son Astyanax, along with King Priam and Queen
Hecuba—this solemn occasion interrupted by news of the priest Laocoön’s and his
two sons’ deaths for desecrating the Greek gift to the Trojans of the great
wooden horse.
Inexplicably, the Trojans, despite Cassandra’s pleas, suddenly appear
determined to bring the horse into their city, offering it up as an offering to
Athena, an act powerfully visualized on the Metropolitan stage as the horse is
pulled into view, assuring Troy’s destruction.
One of the most disturbing scenes of all opera occurs in the last few
moments of the first part of Berlioz’s work, as the majority of the Trojan
woman, hearing of the loss of their city and observing the burning castle and
other major buildings, determine to kill themselves en masse, which, as
the Greek soldiers appear, they proceed to do, dropping to the floor one by
one. If there was ever a symbol of the end of any culture, it is this
Jonestown-like suicide.
Indeed, much of the work, its constant focus on war and the hatred the
Trojan warriors breed wherever they go, seems very contemporary, given just
such events in the mid-East today. But, Berlioz almost lulls us into the dream
of a paradisiacal peace with the long two acts that follow wherein the Trojans
come upon the pacific Carthaginians, ruled by the beautiful Dido (Susan
Graham). I am not sure that I completely responded to the white-clothed
Carthage population, which looked more like a Mormon gathering than a North
African community, but I suppose the reference was to a sort caftan-clothed
community such as Morocco might be seen today. As opposed to Troy, whose
populace have suffered years and years of violence, the Carthage population—who
themselves have had to escape their home city of Tyre—seem to be a far-more
enlightened people, celebrating their own creativity in ships and buildings and
in toiling the soil. The queen, in fact, sits upon a throne seemingly tracking
and glorifying the architecture of Carthage itself, as she and others add,
throughout the early scenes, new constructions to this pop-up map. Yet, that
set also somewhat irritated me, simply in its placement of her throne upon the
very homes and buildings in which the people lived.
And although Dido seems wise and bountiful, she herself seems to have
grave doubts about the future. Despite the fact that her sister assures her she
will again find love, Dido resists the thought, insisting the she remain
focused on her duties, for which is described as delusional—just as Cassandra
had previously described for her visionary warnings.
The rest of this two act section, is spent in dances—not always
brilliantly performed in Sunday’s high definition broadcast, perhaps not so
believably choreographed, and far too long, as much as I enjoy the French opera
tradition of including ballet—is followed by several lovely ballads,
particularly Iopas’ (Eric Cutler) pastoral song, O blonde Cérès—both dance singing in honor of the intense love that
has arisen between Aeneas and Dido. Only the queen’s advisor Narbal (Kwangchul
Youn) seems to proffer any dramatic intensity as he, like Cassandra earlier,
foretells the end of his city through Dido’s romance.
So beautiful is Dido’s and Aeneas’ rhapsodic duet to their love (O nuit d’irvesse), however, that one
wants to believe in Anna’s (the excellent Karen Cargill) belief that the future
can bring nothing but joy.
Just beneath the surface are Aeneas’ own songs of the Trojan history—in
which he recounts that after the destruction of Troy, Andromache, instead of
killing herself, has married Pyrrhus, one of the murderers of her former
husband Hector—wherein we are reminded of these wandering Trojan’s damnable
fate. At the moment of their greatest bliss, predictably, Aeneas is visited by
the ghosts of Hector, Coroebus, and Cassandra, reminding him that his destiny
lies not in Carthage but in Italia.
Beginning with a beautiful ballad, Vallon
sonore, sung by homesick sailor, the Trojan sailors are quickly awakened to
that destiny once more, as Aeneas, escaping the arms of his beloved queen,
determines to set sail. Dido’s appearance temporarily weakens him, but as the
ghosts of his own past appear once again, he attempts to explain to her that he
must abandon their love in order to obey his gods.
The opera from thereon belongs to Dido as, in her fury, she calls down
fates upon the Trojan survivors, demanding a pyre of all Trojan presents and
her gifts to them be constructed, upon which she, like the Trojan women of the
first part, stabs herself to death. The pacific and loving people she has ruled
suddenly become, like the Trojans before them, a warlike nation determined upon
revenge, sensing, perhaps, their own destruction by the future Romans.
Watching Les troyens is, at
times, an exciting and stimulating experience. Yet I can’t say it was entirely
fulfilling. I suspect our seemingly accidental choice of German bratwurst and
potato salad for dinner that evening might have subconsciously suggested that
we might have preferred—despite my usual preference for anything French—to have
sat through, for a similar length of time, Wagner’s tale of a similarly
destroyed culture—also with Deborah Voight—Götterdämmerung.
Los Angeles, January 6, 2013
Reprinted from American Theatre, Opera, and Performance (January 2013).
