Madama Butterfly - the grim original, Chailly La Scala

Puccini Madama Butterfly at Teatro alla  Scala, Milan, but not in the famous version, but the original so reviled at its premiere that it was immediately revised by its composer for a second premiere four months later on 28 May 1904, in Brescia, not Milan, the modern "standard" being the score published in 1907. The original Madama has never been lost, but has remained in the archives of Ricordi ever since.  Puccini continued revising the opera until 1920 : Riccardo Chailly included parts of that last revision when he conducted the opera ar La Scala in 1996.  The February 1904 version, which Chailly conducted this month at La Scala with Bryan Hymel, the Pinkerton of choice these days,   was broadcast live all over the world. Alas! I missed it having endured the appallingly awful Magic Flute (Adam Fischer/Peter Stein) but this "new" Madama Butterfly is available audio only on BR Klassik HERE.

Hymel is,  of course, outstanding, especially since, in the original, Pinkerton is unsympathetic, a callous cad, with no "regret" aria to redeem him and soften the narrative.  He also mocks the locals and calls them scum.  The beauty of Hymel's singing underlines the venality of the character he portrays.  The "love duet" is thoroughly creepy.  Such glorious music, such depraved morals.  This is infinitely closer to the way things were in an era when imperialism and racism went unchallenged.  All the more respect to Puccini for seeing past the "romantic" surface and through to the fundamental brutality in the story.  Please read my other pieces on Madama Butterfly, on Asian stereotypes and race issues by using the buttons at right and below.  Maria José Siri sings Cio-cio San. (Full cast list here)

Bryan Hymel pops up in a grocery

Now THIS is how to bring opera to a non-opera-going audience !  Bryan Hymel pops into Central Grocery in the French Quarter in New Orleans,  a deli where he's been going since he was a kid.  Then, suddenly, he bursts into song. The customers don't want to be on camera, but wow: they are a bit edgy because of the TV cameras, but they notice That Voice.  This is the sort of semi-spontaneous, natural and friendly way to get through to people who might not otherwise think opera is for them. Exceptional singing, and delivered with enthusiasm. This is what communication should be! The customers might not rush to the opera house, but they won't forget, and they'll tell their friends. Absolutely counteracts the joyless  counter-productive type of "music education".  This is fun, and no compromise on quality!  BTW a Muffuletta is a kind of sandwich, a cross between an English muffin and ciabatta, filled with lots of meat, olives, pesto etc.

Verdi Les vêpres siciliennes Royal Opera House

Kaspar Holten promised that Verdi Les vêpres siciliennes at the Royal Opera House would be a spectacle, and he was right. The sheer presence of singers like Bryan Hymel, Michael Volle, Erwin Schrott and Lianna Haroutounian guaranteed its success, and Antonio Pappano's impassioned conducting made it orchestrally thrilling. Indeed, I suspect the singing will get even better as the run continues. Musical excellence is a given with this cast, conductor and orchestra. The big news was Stefan Herheim's ROH debut. 

Like the recent Salzburg Don Carlos (reviewed here) as opposed to Don Carlo, Les vêpres siciliennes, as opposed to I Vespri Siciliani, is bringing greater respect for Verdi's French language operas. Les vêpres siciliennes isn't a rarity. It's been staged several times in Europe in recent years (including Christof Loy in Amsterdam) and was heard in London in 1968 at the Camden Festival. These operas change casual assumptions about opera history. Verdi is enhanced, as an international figure and as a composer for orchestra.  Les vêpres siciliennesis a long, unwieldy creature as was the style of the era. Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable confused London critics whose knowledge of period probably isn't vast. The challenge, for the Royal Opera House, is to present antique repertoire in a way that modern audiences can relate to. I was privileged, last night, to sit beside a lady who had never been to an opera before. Les vêpres siciliennes is a daring choice for a first opera, but this lady was thrilled! Which goes to prove that audiences should listen with open minds and open hearts.

Stefan Herheim's Les vêpres siciliennes may not be as astoundingly brilliant as his Salzburg Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (see review here), but Verdi isn't Wagner and this isn't, perhaps, Verdi at his best. But Herheim develops the innate ideas in the drama. The set, designed by Philipp Fürhofer, reminds us that we are watching an opera, most certainly not a historical document. It was frightening how some London critics were unable to cope with La donna del Lago  (more here) as Rossini's vision of Scotland as opposed to the reality of Scotland's past.  Until audiences in our time drop the silly notion of setting specificity - which didn't exist until very recently - we need sets like this to remind us that opera is art, not history. Theatre-within-theatre sets might be a cliché is inept hands, like Robert Lepage's taxidermy Adès Tempest (reviewed here) but Herheim has always been interested in the process of creative development, and we need to focus on Verdi or miss the point of this version of the opera in French.

The Overture unfolds to a scena where soldiers attack ballerinas. It's absolutely in keeping with the brutality of military occupation, and validated later in the libretto. It also connects to the use of ballet in French opera, and perhaps to the way artists are screwed by those who want mindless entertainment, not art. The auditorium lights up and we see the punters in the boxes in the stage theatre laughing. At the very end, when peace seems possible, good people are massacred. So much for "patriotism" and easy answers. It's not easy to stage a massacre in the limited time the music provides, so throwing light back onto the ROH auditorium throws responsibility onto the audience. Like Verdi, we too have to be creative and enact the horror in our minds. The story doesn't end when the music stops.

Herheim shows how dance is integral to the opera. Dancers don't just appear for the beautiful Four Seasons ballet (as was planned) but are incorporated as silent figures at many points in the drama, again  reinforcing the idea of art as opposed to reality. In the final act the ballet has more dramatic purpose than many expect. The celebrations are delightful but the charm is artificial, just as the plot at this stage is hopelessly fanciful. The music and the dancers are pretty but the opera will end with blood. hence the constant tension in the undercurrents in the music. Appearances are illusion. Henri (brilliantly sung by Bryan Hymel) turns out to be the long lost son of Guy de Montfort (equally brilliantly sung by Michael Volle).On these sudden changes, the opera pivots, much like the movement of a ballerina.  The vast choruses sway: who are the patriots, who are the persecutors? Procida (Erwin Shrott) is initially a sympathetic character, whose "O Palermo!" rouses us to his cause. But he's more interested in killing than compromise. At the wedding ball he appears in disguise, dressed as a ballerina in black tutu, with red sequins that suggest blood. It's in keeping with the text and also reinforces the theme of dance as metaphor. Even the distorting mirror walls in the set reflect the distorted images in the drama.

Herheim productions are so detailed, and so thoughtful, that images repay careful consideration. The skull masks the chorus wear, for example, hide their faces but also remind us that, even in the midst of a party, Death awaits. When the invaders attack women, a small boy stands up to them, waving a toy sword. Later he becomes a Cupid. Artists often have signatures. This child figure is typical Herheim, suggesting purity amid conflict, and the ultimate validity of idealism.  Bear this image in mind, carefully, because this production generated nasty speculation from those desperate to disparage Herheim and Holten. Even the change of choreographer was construed as anti-Herheim, even though the background to the dispute was much more complex and not related solely to the production. This Les vêpres siciliennes fully vindicates itself. Go, listen,. learn and enjoy.

Jim Sohre  has reviewed this in Opera Today
photos : copyright Bill Cooper, courtesy Royal Opera House

Salzburg Braunfels Medievalism as Modernity

How I wish I could be in Salzburg next week - Birtwistle Gawain and the Green Knight (coming unstaged to the Barbican next year) and Walter Braunfels's Jeanne d'Arc, Szenen aus dem Leben der Heiligen Johanna. Manfred Honeck conducts. He made the only recording, released in 2012.  Juliane Banse sings Joan, as she did on the recording but look who else is in the cast!  Bryan Hymel singing the Archangel Michael, Pavol Breslik singing Charles de Valois, Thomas E Bauer the Archbishop and Johan Reuter as Gilles des Rais.  This is luxury casting indeed, infinitely better than the recording (though Banse is superb). There was also a staged production (Schlingensief director, conductor ULf Schirmer) in Berlin in 2010, also with Juliane Banse. Braunfels is at last getting megastar billing.

Braunfels' Jeanne d'Arc, Szenen aus dem Leben der Heiligen Johanna.is eclipsed by the fame of Die Vögel, but it's a masterpiece, tighter, more concise and conceptual. The piece is mock medieval, but like Hindemith's Mathis der Maler, Hartmann's Simplicius Simplicissimuss, (more HERE) Orff's Carmina Burana and indeed Braunfel's  Die Verkündigung. (more HERE)  and  Honegger's Joan of Arc at the Stake (more HERE). It happened not only in music but in the visual arts, architecture and film. Clean lines, stark drama, stylized symbolism. All keynotes of the period. Think also of films like Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc or Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky (with music by Prokofiev).

Medievalism was a way towards modernism. There's nothing retro or escapist in these pieces. Far too much is made of the fact that fashion changed after the war, and this music didn't get performed. After the trauma of the Second World War, people were hardly in the mood to deal with reminders of the period, especially when, up to 1989, much of central and eastern Europe was still controlled by the Soviet Union, in direct consequence of the war. Similarly, the "jazz age" and modernity of the 1920;s was a reaction against the trauma of the First World War and the forces that shaped it. It's nonsense to blame Schoenberg or modern music for the eclipse of composers like Braunfels. Every decent composer creates something personal and original. Cultures survive because they adapt.

Braunfels fought at the front during the First World War. The trauma completely changed his perspectives. Die Vögel is is an early stage in Braunfel's's engagement with the issues of the 20th century. Jeanne d'Arc is in many ways its culmination, politically, spritually and musically.
 
Braunfels started writing Jeanne d'Arc in 1938. He'd been proscribed by the Nazis, and made an unemployable non-person whose music could not be performed in public. Hitler was threatening war, staved off by British appeasement. By the time Braunfels completed the opera in 1943, war had broken out all over again on an even wider scale than the war he'd known. This time his sons were at the front.. The madness was happening all over again."We are like castaways on a desert island, around which the hurricane continues to rage", he wrote.

Braunfels' choice of subject was deliberate. Joan of Arc rallied the French against English invaders. This time France was invaded by Germans. Joan was a powerless girl who stood up to overwhelming forces. Throughout Europe in the 1920's, 30's  and 40's, Joan was a symbol  explored in plays, movies, and music. Braunfels' most direct inspiration was Paul Hindemith's Mathis der Maler, which he heard in Zurich in 1938. By connecting to medieval Christian Europe, Braunfels eschews both totalitarian anti-religion and the kind of nationalism that causes war.

Braunfels' libretto, which he wrote himself after reading about Joan's trial, places the context firmly in  a time of crisis. A chorus of villagers cry in panic, Hilfe, Hilfe! As Joan's father later says "An Himmel lohnt drer Brand von tausend Höfen". Johanna, however, is sitting by a tree from which a strange light is shining. Voices tell her that she has a mission. She';s so child-like that she sings a ditty, complete with tra la las. "Denn ein Kreiger, ein Kreiger, soll ich werden".

Braunfels' music is pointedly pure and simple. Single instrumental groups, often solo instruments, swathes of strings and winds suggest flowing movement not decoration for its own sake. Even in the scenes in the royal court, textures are clean, texts conversational. King and knights, portrayed as ordinary men. When Saint Michael appears, he's almost one of their own. For the faithful like Johanna, (and Braunfels), saints are as natural as normal people.

Braunfels uses a formal structure to frame the narrative, like a  medieval painting. Three main sections, Der Berufung (the summons) Der Triumph and Das Leiden, (Sufferings) unfold. Der Triumph, of course, lasts but a few minutes. It's preceded by a bizarre interlude, after the first Act. The Herzog de la Trémouille steps in front of the theatre curtain and sings a monologue. "When God created the Fool, he, the wisest of all, could be sure that scum (Abschaum) would arise from it". The Duke thinks Johanna is scum, for she leads "Die dumpfe Masse" (stupid masses) "From every hole there now crawls all who were poor, and who, deeply humiliated, long for a 1000 year Reich - troopers, roughnecks, greedy wastrels!". (Landsknechte, Raufbolde, geldsücht'ge Habenichste). Ferocious dark chords, skeletal discords, smoky woodwinds. The vocal part is set with angular extremes. "And I alone" sings the bass, "should be wrong because I don't follow deception and don't give in to urges". Perhaps Braunfels is referring to non-believers who distrust faith and miracles. But the references to the rise of the Brownshirts are so obvious that they can't be ignored.  Anyone who thinks Braunfels was a mindless, dreamy Romantic needs to hear this, and wonder what its upside-down morality might mean.

The moment of Johanna's triumph at Rheims with fanfares. At last the music soars as one would expect, but this is no cinematic glory. Braunfels keeps his colours clear, the text simple. "Johanna! Johanna!" the townsfolk cry, but there's a chill, which prepares us for the next scene, where at dawn, Johanna is communing alone with her voices. This minor-key stillness seems the true heart of Braunfels' meditation,   We're spared the details of Johanna's first imprisonment. Each scene is preceded by a Vorspeil that creates mood, but the one that begins the third act expresses the passage of time. Johanna has been confessed and recanted, yet she's still in prison. Dark rhythms, blasting timpani, trumpets blasting, Johanna's voice ascending shooting up the scale, all sudden, tense moments cut off in their prime.  Distant kin of the jerky bird rhythms of Die Vögel and Die Verkündigung. The Vicar Inquisitor condemns Johanna in a mix of speech and stylized chant. The king and nobles call Johanna  a fraud : their music vaguely like medieval march. Then St Michael appears, a Lohengrin whom no-one can see.

Long, keening lines in the orchestra. We're now at the stake in the marketplace at Rouen. Joan is calm for Saint Michael has told her why she must die. Significantly, now, Braunfels gives Gilles des Rais (Bluebeard) an interesting aria. "Nien, niemals, nein, niemals, so endet das nicht"  He can't believe that the real miracle is Johanna's death, not her escape. Braunfels shows des Rais as sensitive, confused and desperate for certainty, "Gewissheit! Gewissheit! Gewissheit!". Perhaps it was that crisis of faith that drove the historic des Rais into madness and turned him into a mass murderer of innocent children? This is an aspect of the story few explore, but Braunfels does it by implication,  and shows it as.a very 20th century anguish.

The Bishop of Beauvais insists "Mein System war der richtiges!", but the part is written to show the strain on the tenor's voice. Yet again, we hear the bird rhythms of  Die Vögel , and how they function as exclamation points breaking up the vocal line. Not comfortable, soothing or Romantic at all.  In contrast, the deeper, more lugubrious timbre of the Vicar Inquisitor, who shows more sympathy with Johanna. The chorus howls like a mob and in a sudden crescendo, we can hear the flames ignite. Screams and  eerie"smoke" like cadences from the orchestra. Gilles des Rais appears again, his last aria tinged with extreme grief. He sees Johanna as Christ-like, but still can't understand what her death means "Satan, du hast geseigt". Only when the mob discovers that Johanna's heart did not burn do they realize a miracle has taken place. "Wir haben eine Heilige gebrannt" cries the Vicar Inquisitor. By then, though, it's too late.


A recording of this Salzburg performance (one only) opera will be broadcast by ORF on Saturday, August 3, at 7.30 pm on the Ö1 channel.

Berlioz The Trojans Prom 11

Berlioz The Trojans (Les Troyens) came to BBC Prom 11 barely two weeks aftere its sell-out run at the Royal Opera House. This made a difference because all involved were still so fresh that the concert performance had the energy of true theatre, but without the constraints of staging.

By the time Troy falls, Virgil tell us that the hero Aeneas (Enée), has already had many adventures, with Gods and monsters. In this painting (Tiepolo), Enée introduces his son to a very un-Mediterranean Dido (Didon). The kid's wearing wings because a goddess has turned him into Cupid to break down Didon's vow of celibacy. Antonio Pappano's approach thus captures the adventure that characterized Enée's past. The Trojans can be done as a formal studio recording, but it's much more idiomatic when imbued with this innate sense of theatre. Pappano and his orchestra have already proven themselves at the Royal Opera House. Now they can, like Enée, take more risks. If anything, this Proms performance was freer, more spontaneous and closer to the spirit of Berlioz's audacious vision.

Significantly, Berlioz eschews the full Aenied saga. The scenes in Troy have such cataclysmic drama that they almost overwhelm, but they set out the background to what Berlioz is much more focussed upon. Didon, Enée and their people are refugees from different destroyed civilizations who meet in a place of temporary refuge. With his ability to write flamboyant pictures of excess, he throws us off balance by concentrating on the relationship between the two main characters. It may seem like an anticlimax to hear Didon (Eva Maria Westbroek) sing happily with her contented subjects, but Berlioz is deliberately creating a contrast between militarist warfare and domestic peace. Having lost Tyre, the people of Carthage are grateful for what they'e achieved. Didon is not Cassandre, but almost her opposite. Anna Maria Antonacci is a more "dramatic" singer, but Westbroek's warmth is exactly what makes Carthage so alluring to the dispossessed Trojans. Performance doesn't exist in limbo but grows from interpretation.

Didon and Enée are driven from the hunt by a storm, but it's not the storm that matters but the calm haven within which they shelter and fall in love. The duet Nuit d'ivresse is at the heart of the opera in many ways. Again, intimacy and understatement mean more than showily extravagant singing. All theur lives, these two have lived for the public, so to speak. At last, under cover of night, they can be themselves. Bryan Hymel's Enée is a good counterpart to Westbroek's Didon because they create the parts with such sincerity. Empires and glory have nothing on love, so the emphasis here is on naturalness, not histrionics.  The greater spontaniety of the Proms performance caused a slight wobble in Hymel's long  Inutiles regrets, but it added to character. Enée's heart breaks at the prospect of leaving Didon, but it is the crucial, soaring climaxes that show his resolve. Hymel sang this with flawless poise, faced as heroically as Enée faces his fate. Hymel is only 32, with great potential. Most of this cast are very young indeed, and enthusiastic, which gives this production its vigour.

Berlioz writes many vignettes into The Trojans to display his virtuosic command of form. In concert performance, continuity is less important, so we can indulge in the vignettes for their own sake. Ji-min Park's O blonde Cérès was magical,  and  Ed Lyon sang Hylas's Vallon sonore so movingly that I thought of the Steersman in the Flying Dutchman. Also firmly portayed, Hanna Hipp's Anna and Jihoon Kim's Hector. In the interludes for ballet, Berlioz demonstrates how he can write exotic, pastoral and orientalist portraits. Pappano and the orchestra delineated these vividly, showing how important they are to the fabric of the opera. Having heard this Les Troyens live on stage, in film and in concert, I'm convinced that this is one to cherish. It's human scale, not bombast, its warmth and naturalism informed by its insight into the meaning of the opera. True, this is an epic tragedy, but it wouldn't be quite as poignant if we didn't empathize with the personalities. Please read my review of the ROH performance, and the film broadcast - all different. See here in Opera Today for the synopsis, libretto and a non commercial stream conducted by Sylvian Cambreling.

Berlioz The Trojans BROADCAST analyzed

Hector Berlioz Les Troyens (The Trojans) is available from 9th July, online, on demand, free and internationally until October HERE on thespace.org.  Live opera and filmed opera are completely different, complementary experiences. Live, the David McVicar production was what the French call a spectacle, created to stun. On film, directed by François Roussillon, it reveals extra subtleties not visible on stage.

Always, I think, judge a production by how it reflects the composer and his ideas. So David McVicar's decision to set the opera in Berlioz's time absolutely connects to Berlioz and his times. Under Napolean , France conquered Europe. Under Napolean III, France was building an empire all over the world. This was a time of grand visions. So Berlioz is channelling the spirit of the times, creating an opera he hoped would outdo anyone else in sheer scale and audacity.

Hence the panoramic sweep, and the cornucopia of ideas in the opera. Just as Mahler would later speak of "a world in a symphony", Berlioz is creating a world in an opera. Hence the extremes, and the flaws. But that's what the world is like, it's not meant to be perfect. When we listen to Les Troyens, we should be listening to what Berlioz was trying to achieve, and the context of his work. The extravagance of this staging reflects the extrvagance, even the vulgarity, in the opera itself. It's not surprising that he never heard Les Troyens in full performance. Even by the standards of the time it was a blockbuster of cinematic scale. And after the war of 1870 and the Paris Commune, would audiences want to reminded of empires destroyed?  Understand McVicar's concept of the Second Empire and its analogy with the Trojans, and this production shows its intellectual depth. (It's certainly not just about the Crimean war as some suggest).

The opera happens on two continents, in Troy and in Carthage. The dichotomy is significant, in terms of style as well as in narrative. Which part means more in terms of the opera? In the first part, the Trojans rejoice, but are annihilated because they believe in the Horse. Thus the Horse as theatrical device is meant to shock and awe, and breathe fire. It's a symbol of war. Yet it's not just a machine. Wars are created by people. So the Horse here moves like a living being, and at the end, the figure of a mechanical man is seen, a silhouette of the  Horse in the background.

 In the scenes in Troy, Berlioz goes for big effects. Cassandre dominates because only she can see what fate has in store. It's a role meant to be done with exaggerated histrionics, because that's in keeping with the heightened madness of the events. Some have commented on Anna Caterina Antonacci's semaphore acting, but I think it's appropriate. Berlioz wrote extremes into the vocal part, partly to counteract the tumult behind, but also, being a canny operator, he must have known that audiences go in for that sort of excess. There is no need for Antonacci to engage emotionally with the role as long as she projects it in extreme high relief.  Rather like the stylized depictions in Greek art. When Énée appears, he's automatically upstaged, by the turbulence around him and by the sight of Hector covered in blood. Good singing from Jihoon Kim, considering he's rolling on the ground.  I think Berlioz wants this because it emphasizes just how important the role is going to become later. The First Act is fantastic theatre, but what really counts in this opera is what happens to Énée after Troy is destroyed and the Trojans are forced to roam the Mediterranean as refugees. 

After the bombast of the First Act, Berlioz is deliberately shifting gears. That's why Didon is written as a kind of Earth Mother, beloved by her nation because she's benevolent. Someone said to me that  Eva-Maria Westbroek doesn't  look Lebanese (where Tyre was), but so what? She's meant to be a contrast to the harrowed Vestal Virgin Cassandre. She has loved before and is mature. The gentleness in the part doesn't grab the audience by the throat as Cassandre's part does, but that's the point. Film brings out the graciousness in Westbroek's singing, and redresses the imbalance created by the two disparate parts of the opera.

Ultimately, Les Troyens predicates on how the two central characters relate to each other against a background of tragedy. The Trojans are dispossessed, and the Carthaginians threatened by the Numidians. Nothing is stable, even if Carthage is prosperous for the present.

After the bombastic extremes of the First Act, which are necessary to the plot,  we're conditioned to expect more of the same later, but is that what Berlioz wanted? Énée is a hero, so we expect action man histrionics. But let's not forget that Didon was a refugee too, and won't be fooled by fake heroics. "Je suis Énée", sings Bryan Hymel,  but as he recounts the sufferings of his people, he expresses the human face of the tragedy.  Énée wins Didon's heart because he's sincere, a good father and a sensitive man.  Because Westbroek and Hymel create their roles with such sensitivity, their Nuit d'ivresse is exquisitely beautiful. The set transforms into night sky, the city of Carthage revolving like a distant planet. The exotic colours are picked up by Antonio Pappano and the ROH orchestra. Truly memorable and intimate. 
 
Flashy singing and acting might impress audiences on a superficial level, but Hymel's interpretation is much more psychologically correct. On film, we see tiny, subconcious movements which reflect the subtle vocal inflections. No director can teach a singer such detail. Hymel has  internalized the part on a very deep level. On the first night, everyone was thinking Jonas Kaufmann, and Hymel seemed to be pushing his natural timbre lower, possibly without realizing it. Besides, audiences nowadays aren't as used to high voiced heroes as was the case in Berlioz's time. French opera favours these voices, but we're also more used to German or Italian norms. On this film, made ten days later, he's settled better into the part which suits his tessitura well. He's done Énée before, and he's still only 32. Lots of potential. Listen to his long soliloquy where he prepares himself for his farewell. Technically this is difficult enough, but Hymel expresses Énée's inner conflict perceptively. Énée is a real hero because he confronts fate, knowing it will break his heart, and Didon's too. Listen for that final, heart rending flourish when he leaves. Berlioz lets Énée depart a warrior. "Italie! Italie!".

As for the final image when the figure of a man appears in the backgroiund, a silhouette of the Horse behind him, it derives straight from Berlioz's stage directions. "On voit passer devant le Capitole un guerrier couvert d’une armure éclatante conduisant des légions romaines". The hero will die but he will help found the Roman Empire. Carthage and Rome will fight, both eventually blitzed by history, as Troy was.

The ballet sequences on stage dragged, but the fault isn't so much with  the production as with our modern assumptions of what opera should be. The 19th century public didn't know or much care what North Africa was really like. For them orientalist fantasy reinforced their image of themselves as conquerors.  McVicar and his team are giving us the "real" Berlioz. It's we who have to adjust to the alien, instead of imposing our own wishes.  Which is the very nature of Imperialism. This Berlioz The Trojans, with its awareness of the hubris of Empire, is extremely deep, but you have to respect it on its own terms. Which is why you need to hear this broadcast.

Please also see my review of the first night HERE. There's a link to Opera Today's review HERE and a link to the libretto and free download (Cambreling, Paris 2006) HERE. 


photo : Bill Cooper, details embedded.