Metropolitan Opera History: Les Troyens 1983-84

	From The Metropolitan Opera Archives: Les Troyens 1983-84
	"The Metropolitan Opera opened its centennial season on Monday night with an unprecedented amount of money in the bank (twenty-three million in a special endowment fund) and a five-hour production of Hector Berlioz's Les Troyens - the largest and most complex work ever mounted by the company - on the stage. Troyens, which is based on Virgil's poetic account of the sack of Troy and the subsequent adventures of Aeneas in Carthage, is, in this version, a monumental, semi-abstract production that involves thirty-three scene changes; a hundred and twenty-eight singers; sixty-one dancers, acrobats, and supers; an orchestra of eighty; three offstage bands; five ghost apparitions; and more than a thousand costumes. The present production is based on a shorter version of the opera which was put on by the Met in 1973, but is considerably changed: it has been expanded musically by its conductor, James Levine, and reworked visually by a new director, Fabrizio Melano, and by its original designer, Peter Wexler. "We paid a visit to the Metropolitan ten days before the opening night and found the entire company rehearsing in an atmosphere of controlled anxiety. Two tenors were missing (José Carreras was en route from Europe, and Plácido Domingo had not decided whether or not he could sing the leading role in Troyens), but all the other principal singers were in place and were preparing their roles in operas scheduled for the first week. In one basement room, Joan Sutherland, a drum slung around her waist, was leading a group of French soldiers in a comic march that accompanies the 'Rataplan' duet in Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment. Down the hall, Grace Bumbry, singing the tragic heroine of Verdi's La Forza del Destino for the first time, was blocking out her death scene with David Sell, a staff stage director. 'We'd better find the padded rock,' said Mr. Sell, guiding Miss Bumbry over to a mound of gray-and-green plastic foam at one side of the room, 'because after you're stabbed, wherever Padre Guardiano puts you down you stay until the end.' Upstairs in the auditorium, we found Troy on the main stage, in the shape of seven enormous rectangular towers; James Levine on the podium, rehearsing the orchestra with an emphasis on balance, precision, and transparency; and Fabrizio Melano and Peter Wexler contemplating their handiwork from a lighted desk halfway back in the house. "We asked what major changes they had made in the production, and Mr. Wexler, a slight, bearded man, replied that he had refined his original ideas by subtracting a number of details. 'When we chose to do the opera as an abstract work, I designed two unit sets reflecting the different kinds of music that Berlioz wrote for Carthage and Troy,' he said. 'Troy, which is warlike and aggressive, has vertical towers that can be moved into semicircular arrangements by stagehands hidden inside their wheeled bases. Carthage, which is more feminine and lyrical, is a curved, stepped platform with enormous oval hangings in back of it. We've added drops, redesigned all of the principal costumes, and simplified other costumes, stripping them of some details to make them look less mannered. We have also replaced three film sequences that gave us some problems. The Trojan horse is now a large abstract gold head, Hector's ghost is gold-helmeted hero who appears to Aeneas in a burst of flame, and the Royal Hunt music is played in front of a dropped curtain.' "Mr. Melano, a tall, dark-haired young man, told us that he had staged the opera as a classical epic seen through the filter of nineteenth-century romantic sensibility. 'Troyens is united by a single idea, the founding of Rome,' he said, 'and the entire opera is laid out in very large sections, which have to be presented with the sweep of a classical painting. And when you try to suggest a classical epic with minimal scenery you need a very grand style of acting. Every moment has to have a certain weight, balance, and extension to it; the emotions are so intense that the acting has to be a little larger than life. Since our version compresses five acts into three, many of the set changes take place with an open curtain. Our main technical problem is simply to keep things moving from scene to scene without a hitch.' "We walked backstage, at Mr. Melano's suggestion, to watch the arrival of the Trojan horse - a particularly tricky change, involving a lot of moving scenery, three offstage bands, and a chorus that began a hymn to Pallas in the wings and followed the horse to the front of the stage. At his desk in the right wing, Tom Connell, the stage manager, counted bars in his score and called stage moves and lighting cues, which were picked up on headsets by stagehands. Behind him, in a cavernous side stage, were two of the brass bands, with conductors and television monitors, and a chorus of Trojan citizens, who watched Mr. Levine on another monitor. On the darkened stage, an enormous steel platform holding a turntable and the seven Trojan Towers slid back fifteen feet, leaving Cassandra (Jessye Norman) lamenting her fate downstage. One of the brass bands began the Trojan anthem; then the second band joined in, to indicate the gradual approach of a triumphal procession. The chorus picked up the melody as an enormous skeletal gold horse's head was hoisted silently to the top of the central tower. Trojan soldiers bearing torches marched up from underneath the stage through two openings at the front of the platform. Then other Trojans, wearing long gray robes trimmed with gold, scrambled onto the turntable at the back of the stage. It began to revolve slowly, carrying the glittering horse and its followers round to the front in and its followers around to the front in a giant circle. The two groups of Trojans joined forces to sing the final verse of the anthem together as the lights came up and the horse reached the center of the stage. The turntable continued to revolve, carrying the citizens of Troy off to their fate, until Mr. Levine put up an arm to stop it. 'Chorus, you've prepared this so well the sound is stunning,' he said. 'But remember, when you're back there in the wings you've got to deliver the same energy, the same intensity, that you're delivering out here in front. And when you come in at the back watch me carefully, because this is the only place in the opera where we're still rhythmically swimming. Now let's go back and do the horse again.'" [Unknown, "Centennial" (New Yorker, 3 October 1983: 29-31) "Despite the oratorio circumstances, the cast members gave their all. In the role of the prophetess Cassandra, soprano Jessye Norman at long last made her Met debut. She delivered her pronouncements with magnificent tone and searing authority, and while her figure is of the same Wagnerian proportions as her voice, she moved with as much grace as grandeur. After a somewhat tremulous opening, mezzo Tatiana Troyanos sang and acted Queen Dido superbly, fully comprehending the character's passion and sense of high tragedy. "...Although it was reported that Plácido Domingo had wished to be relieved of his assignment as Aeneas, the role happily turned out to be a very good one for him. He looked absolutely wonderful as the noble Trojan hero, the uniquely visceral impact of his voice was a perfect fit, and though he had occasional problems with the French text, he at least delivered the basic sense of it with panache. Only two brief sections - his entrance and a portion of his last act aria - were transposed downward, while the rest of his role, including the cruelly high love duet, was sung confidently in key." [Bill Zakariasen, "Les Troyens a Triumph at Metropolitan Opera" (The Daily News, 28 September 1983)] "At least Fabrizio Melano's staging is a major improvement over Nathaniel Merrill's original, which had virtually no theatrical impact at all. Not only does Melano handle crowd scenes authoritatively and effectively - the mass suicide of the Trojan virgins, so ho-hum ten years ago, has become a moment of true horror - but he also cares about building individual character relationships. Dido and Aeneas actually behave like real people, hesitantly in love at first sight and later physically obsessed with each other during the gorgeous steamy love duet that ends Act IV. At every point during the opera, the public and private forces that motivate Les Troyens could scarcely be more lucidly defined. "This year's cast also made a generally stronger impression than what the Met was able to muster up in 1973. Plácido Domingo's well-publicized misgivings about the suitability of his voice for Aeneas were not entirely unfounded, although he performed the part conscientiously and emerged with honor if not glory. He obviously felt uncomfortable up top, where most of the part lies, and he seemed to be gingerly feeling his way much of the time rather than meeting the challenges head on - but then, so did Jon Vickers ten years ago. Aeneas is not exactly a gift to soothe a leading tenor's ego. Compared to the more aggressive heroines, Cassandra and Dido, the Trojan hero is essentially a passive pawn of the gods, yet there is much tricky music to negotiate, particularly at the end of the opera when both he and the audience are beginning to feel the strain of a long evening. Domingo, for all of his awkward moments, is probably today's most plausible candidate for this impossible role. "Jessye Norman's awesome Cassandra commanded the first half of the opera, a towering figure of tragic doom as she poured out a flood of glorious sound. Tatiana Troyanos tended to be a twitchy Dido, but for once her nervous energy and glamorous mezzo-soprano seemed to be genuinely focused on creating specific effects rather than fuzzy generalizations. The rest of the cast contained few weak links, and I especially enjoyed Allan Monk's firmly sung Coroebus, Jocelyn Taillon's jolly Anna, Paul Plishka's velvet-voiced Narbal, and Philip Creech's plaintive Hylas. [Peter G. Davis, "A Mix at the Met" (New York, 10 October 1983)] "And the score of Les Troyens is a wonder of operatic aesthetics, as well as a particularly vivid example of dramatization through music. Although the work stands, along with Tristan und Isolde and the Ring, at the summit of music's Romantic Century, the basic stylistic character is neo-Baroque. Arias and duets follow the honored, pre-Mozart pattern of A-B-A; it's especially noticeable in the scenes involving Cassandra and her equally doomed lover Coroebus. A listener coming to Les Troyens after several years away is perhaps astonished at the sheer length and formality of most of the numbers. Whereas Tristan flows from the beginning to the end of each act in one unbroken symphonic stream, Les Troyens uncut, as it is at the Met this season, consists of 52 discrete numbers, distributed among arias, ensembles, ballet divertissements, and, with the celebrated 'Royal Hunt and Storm,' extended pantomime. But so shrewd are Berlioz's juxtapositions of number with number that one is either entranced with the gradual progressions, as with the chain of quintet, septet with chorus, and duet on Dido's moonlit terrace in the fourth act, or jolted by the succession of events in the opera's first two (Trojan) acts. Moreover, the music ranges in character from the spectacular orchestral and choral effects focusing on the Trojan Horse, the Royal Hunt, and the concluding, massed curse on Aeneas's Rome to the melodic and harmonic intoxication of the terrace scene, where Berlioz, that master of the shimmering nocturne (Nuits d'été, Béatrice et Bénédict, and so on), seems to outdo himself. Under the baton of James Levine, who has conducted highly praised concert performances of Les Troyens elsewhere, the Met's orchestra, many of the solo singers, and particularly the chorus did the work justice. Despite the publicity surrounding Plácido Domingo perhaps justified if belated second thoughts about taking on the role of Aeneas for the first time in his career, and not overlooking the successes of Tatiana Troyanos's first Met Dido and of Jessye Norman's sensational house debut as Cassandra, David Stivender's chorus walked off with highest honors on opening night. By my approximate count, the chorus had been expanded by 50 per cent to 120, but in the great reverberating ensemble numbers they sounded like five times that number. A good deal of the sonic effect probably stemmed from stage director Fabrizio Melano's capitalizing on the Coronation Scene in John Dexter's production of Le Prophête and spreading the choristers out on a stage apron extended beyond the proscenium's sides." [Leighton Kerner, "Les Troyen has Landed!" (Village Voice, 11 October 1983)] "Jessye Norman was reported to have been impressive as Cassandra in the opening performances of Les Troyens at the Metropolitan Opera this season, but Dido is a richer role, and on Wednesday night, when Miss Norman switched parts, she created a Carthaginian Queen who was both regal and vulnerable. it was a subtle and affecting dramatic portrait that made the production's abstract metallic sets and often bizarre costumes seem stark indeed in contrast. She began as noble and authoritative, but then turned inward, became troubled, her voice melancholic and slightly edgy. By the final scenes, the Queen had turned into an Ophelia, writhing with inner pain accompanied by the outbursts and pants of the score. Her farewell aria was fluid and seductive, suggesting in its timbre both sensuous pleasures and death. Here Carthage is undermined by the passion that the Trojan Aeneas awakes within the Queen, just as in the first part of the opera the Trojans are undermined by taking a wooden animal within their gates; both endings are all the more tragic because they begin as celebrations. Miss Norman never allowed any of this to remain mere myth. She turned it into an immediate and personal history. Next to such a performance, William Lewis - who has taken over the role of Aeneas from Plácido Domingo - had to have been left in the shadow, even in the haunting duet, "Nuit d'ivresse." But his was, for the most part a sturdy, well-executed performance, seeming just a bit weary and strained from its difficulties in the final act." [Edward Rothstein, "Opera: Miss Norman as Dido" (New York Times, 13 October 1983)]		Jessye Norman as Cassandra Photographs by James Heffernan. Plácido Domingo as Aeneas Photograph by James Heffernan. Tatiana Troyanos as Dido and Plácido Domingo as Aeneas Photograph by James Heffernan. Jocelyn Taillon as Anna and Tatiana Troyanos as Dido Photograph by James Heffernan. Tatiana Troyanos as Dido Photograph by James Heffernan. Paul Plishka as Narbal Photograph by James Heffernan.