HECTOR BERLIOZ (1803-1869)

 

The Trojans

 

Grand opera in five acts

Libretto by the composer after Virgil’s Aeneid

 

Dido......Blanche Thebom, mezzo-soprano

Aeneas......Jon Vickers, tenor

Cassandra......Amy Shuard, soprano

Corebus......Jess Walters, baritone

Anna......Lauris Elms, mezzo-soprano

Narbal......David Kelly, bass

Panthus......Michael Langdon, bass

Ascanius......Joan Carlyle, soprano

Iopas......Richard Verreau, tenor

Priam......Forbes Robinson, bass

Hecuba......Noreen Berry, contralto

Hylas......Dermot Troy, tenor

Helenus......Edgar Evans, tenor

Ghost of Hector......Joseph Rouleau, bass

Greek Captain......Robert Allman, baritone

Mercury......Alan Beale, baritone

A Soldier/First Trojan Sentry......Ronald Lewis, baritone

Second Trojan Sentry......Rhydderch Daviesm, baritone

 

Covent Garden Opera Chorus (chorus-master: Douglas Robinson)

Covent Garden Orchestra (leader: Charles Taylor) / Rafael Kubelík

 

English text by Edward J. Dent

Recorded live at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 20 June 1957

 

Jon Vickers in conversation with Jon Tolansky

Recorded at the Barbican Cinema, 25 October 1998

 

‘From our privileged position, half a century on, there may be a temptation to feel superior and to undervalue the 1957 Covent Garden Trojans and what it achieved. We hear these distant sounds with ears familiar with the work from performances – conducted by the likes of Colin Davis, Alexander Gibson, Michael Gielen, Roger Norrington, John Eliot Gardiner, James Levine and others – more assured, more accurate and fuller than was possible for those worthy pioneers, tackling it for the first time. They had to make do with inaccurate performing material hired from the Paris firm of Choudens, disfigured by mistakes (including a clangourous clarinet wrong note – E natural instead of E flat – in Act 3, just after Aeneas’ “Come, child, embrace thy father”). The New Berlioz Edition full score was still no more than a twinkle in the eye of its future editor, Hugh Macdonald. So, in defiance of dramatic sense, the Royal Hunt and Storm was played after the garden scene instead of before, simply because that was where it figured in the Choudens material, having been omitted from the 1864 vocal score and then, later, put back in the wrong place.

 

We may well raise our eyebrows at the cuts that were made in 1957: a sizeable chunk of the Act 3 ceremonies and most of the scene in Dido’s room in Act 5, as well as six bars removed from the processional entry of the Wooden Horse. And some of Rafael Kubelík’s tempos may strike us as strangely excessive, sometimes hectically fast – the chorus’ C-major Allegro vivace in the opening scene, the Wrestlers’ Dance – at other times dragging – Corebus’ cavatina, Dido’s “Farewell, Carthage of mine”. But all this would be to miss the point. What Kubelík and his performers achieved in 1957 and in the revivals of 1958 and 1960 (the latter conducted by John Pritchard) was absolutely crucial. It changed everything. At a stroke the whole picture was transformed. The Covent Garden production vindicated Berlioz’s original conception of a 5-act opera embracing Troy and Carthage in a single span, and his belief in the greatness of the work, and it did so in the face of a century of hostile, dismissive opinion.’

Extract from the booklet note. David Cairns, 2009

 

Testament 4cds SBT41443