Epic at the Met

By William Bender

"I have just completed the poem and score of Les Troyens, an opera in five acts," wrote Hector Berlioz in his memoirs in 1858. "What is to become of this immense work?" There was enough realism in Berlioz's idealistic nature for him to know full well that the fate of Les Troyens lay, in more ways than one, in the hands of the gods. Little did he know that they would decree a century of neglect.

The text of Les Troyens was drawn from Virgil's Aeneid by Berlioz himself. It is an Iliadic arch that spans the siege of Troy, the death of the Trojan women and Aeneas' departure to establish Rome. Indisputably the most epic of all grand operas, it has not yet achieved the popularity of Boris Godunov or Otello, but it is on its way. Britain's Covent Garden has successfully done it twice. The earlier English production, in 1957, was the first full staging in a single evening that even approximated the composer's original intentions. (Berlioz broke it up into two shorter operas but could manage to get only one staged.) Covent Garden's second version, in 1969, produced among other things, the definitive Philips recording by Conductor Colin Davis. Boston's indefatigable Sarah Caldwell staged it as two operas last year. But the Metropolitan Opera studiously avoided Les Troyens, largely because former General Manager Sir Rudolf Bing considered it a bore. Last week the big day--or rather the long night--finally arrived. The essentially uncut performance lasted just under five hours, including two 30-minute intermissions during which, precedent of precedents, ham sandwiches were sold (for $1.25) to the tired and hungry in the grand tier.

Les Troyens' music is at once delicately concentrated and surcharged with an agitato inner flame. It is as short-winded as Mozart and as elongated as Wagner; rarely does Berlioz repeat himself, yet he spins out one duet (Cassandra and her lover Coroebus) for 15 minutes. Never a piker in such matters, Berlioz made heroic stage demands that included hunters on horseback, ships sailing out of a harbor, a stream that turns into a "roaring waterfall" and, of course, a large wooden horse.

The Met's new production, conceived by Stage Director Nathaniel Merrill and executed by Set Designer Peter Wexler, has its curious faults. For example, Merrill has unaccountably confined Dido and Aeneas to a bedchamber when they should be strolling under the stars while singing Berlioz's interpolation of "In such a night as this" from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. In most other respects, the production is a visual extravaganza that at long last brings the Met fully into the 20th century. Rear slides and film vivify all the big moments, from the fall of Troy to the lovers' amorous romp in the woods. Loudspeakers bellow forth the sepulchral voices of such eminent ghosts as Hector and Priam. Wexler's sets (primitive masonry at Troy, fish nets and vessels at Carthage) move quickly and magically, like protagonists in the drama.

Making his debut as the Met's new music director, Czech-born Rafael Kubelik, 59, chose a lustrous cast (notably Jon Vickers as Aeneas, Mignon Dunn as Dido's sister Anna, Judith Blegen in the pants role of Aeneas' son Ascanius) and evoked Les Troyens' eerie instrumental sounds like the dedicated Berlioz buff he is. It was Kubelik who led the pioneering Covent Garden performance in 1957. This time it was Kubelik who not only insisted on Les Troyens for his debut but gave Mezzo Soprano Shirley Verrett, 40, the night of her career in the process. Verrett had been scheduled to sing Cassandra, who appears in the first two acts. When Christa Ludwig, who was to sing Dido (in the last three acts), fell ill during the final week of rehearsal, Verrett agreed to sing both roles. She did not achieve the ideal contrast between those formidable heroines--partly because no one woman could, partly because her voice tends to lose its color at full volume. Otherwise, her roaringly received marathon performance was, like the opera, an epic unto itself.

. William Bender

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