Hector BERLIOZ (1803-1869)
Les Troyens (1858)
Enée – Ben Heppner (tenor)
Didon – Michelle DeYoung (mezzo-soprano)
Cassandre – Petra Lang (mezzo-soprano)
Anna – Sara Mingardo (contralto)
Chorèbe – Peter Mattei (baritone)
Narbal – Stephen Milling (bass)
Iopas – Kenneth Tarver (tenor)
Hylas – Toby Spence (tenor)
Priam – Alan Ewing (bass)
Hécube – Guang Yang (mezzo-soprano)
Ascagne – Isabelle Cals (soprano)
Panthée – Tigran Martirossian (bass)
Hélénus – Bülent Bezdüz (tenor)
London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus/Sir Colin Davis
rec. live, December 2000, The Barbican, London
ALTO ALC4006 [4 CDs: 239:28]
Les Troyens was to be Berlioz’s problem child. He had been given Virgil’s Aeneid by his father when he was a child, and he was deeply fascinated by it, and even when he grew up and discovered Shakespeare, Byron and Goethe he nurtured a dream to compose a great epic work based on Virgil. He even went to Italy when he was in his late twenties and visited areas connected with Virgil. But it wasn’t until 1856 that he started writing the libretto – which took him six weeks – and then began the composition work. It was finished on 12 April 1858. But everything in the garden wasn’t lovely by that. It remained to get this mammoth work performed. The Paris Opéra was uninterested, they didn’t even bother to reply, but eventually he got the second part, acts III to V, Les Troyens à Carthage, staged at the Théâtre Lyrique in November 1863. He was only partly satisfied and hoped that one day the whole work would be performed. But it was ages before that happened, and when it finally happened – in Karlsruhe in 1893 – Berlioz had been dead for 24 years.
After that premiere Les Troyens led a languishing life. The length of the work and the comprehensive cast list made it a less than enticing proposition for the opera houses, and even today performances are far from frequent. It also took quite some time for the work to find its way to the recording studios – the pioneering effort was the Philips set, recorded in 1969 under Sir Colin Davis, which for almost 25 years was alone in the field. Today there are a number of recordings, mostly live ones, available and my highly esteemed colleague Ralph Moore made a survey of a baker’s dozen not long ago (here), which is an excellent guide for those who want to explore this fascinating opera.
I have been a great admirer of Berlioz ever since I in the early 1960s bought an LP with Symphonie Fantastique with the octogenarian Pierre Monteux. After that I gradually acquired most of his orchestral music and went on with his vocal and choral works, but for some reason I never got as far as the operas, apart from Les Troyens. From this opera I had a highlights LP from the Philips set mentioned above, a highlights CD from Charles Dutoit’s complete Decca set from the mid-1990s, several LPs and CDs with orchestral excerpts, including the celebrated Royal Hunt and Storm and several vocal excerpts with Janet Baker, Régine Crespin and others. So I am equipped with material for comparison.
Colin Davis is more than any other conductor associated with Berlioz, and he returned to his works throughout his career. His last concert with the London Symphony Orchestra, which he had conducted since 1959, was a performance of Berlioz’s Requiem at Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London on 26 June 2012. It was recorded for LSO’s own label, just as the present set of Les Troyens, and was issued only weeks before his death on 14 April 2013 at the age of 85. By then his beat was wasn’t as charged and his approach softer and milder than during his heydays. I heard a performance of Der Freischütz at Barbican in May 2012 – also recorded (see review) – and it was a beautiful reading but a bit low-key. No such thing about this Troyens, set down a dozen years earlier when he was in his early seventies. Here is forward movement and intensity that even put his 1969 recording in the shadow. The well-balanced recording allows the listener to savour every strand of Berlioz’s masterly orchestrated score. In the purely instrumental numbers draws masterly playing from the LSO, but the playing is just as masterly in the concerted numbers where not least the LSO Chorus are in sterling form. This very often sounds like it was recorded at a staged performance, such is the intensity of the singing – and the playing. I admit that I was sitting on the edge of my chair most of the time while listening through all five acts – a four-hour-task that seemingly was over before I was half-way through.
Chorus and orchestra are of course important ingredients in this work, but without classy soloists it becomes a half measure. By and large they are up to the mark, some of them more than that. Cassandre was sung in the previous recording by Berit Lindholm, a singer I have admired greatly in the flesh – and on discs – as a superb Brünnhilde. She was the one of the central singers who was least to the critics’ taste. But her big beautiful tone and dramatic involvement was much to my taste and I still regard her assumption of the role more than satisfying. Petra Lang on the present recording may not have the sheer volume of Lindholm, but she is still a strong and intense Cassandre and she has stamina. The best interpreter of the role to my mind is however Régine Crespin on a 1965 set with excerpts, conducted by George Prêtre. Her Malheureux Roi! is heavenly. She also sang Didon (the two characters never appear together) and was superb also there. She is however challenged by Janet Baker on another highlights disc under Alexander Gibson, and Pluton … semble m’être propice from the last act is among the best things she did on records. It’s a pity that she didn’t get the opportunity to record the role complete. I believe she was under contract with EMI when Colin Davis made his first Troyens, but a few years later she moved over to Philips … Josephine Veasey’s Didon is of course a fully worthy assumption and Michelle DeYoung on the present set is deeply involved and dramatic but also strained at times. She is at her very best in the final act. As Enée Canadian Ben Heppner sings better than I have ever heard him in an immensely strenuous role. He negotiates the high tessitura with almost nonchalant elegance and there is not a sign of strain. His compatriot Jon Vickers, who took the role on the Philips recording, may be even more intense, but his tone is not very ingratiating, though few latter-day dramatic tenors have been able to invest their roles with such wholehearted identification.
Quite the best singing, besides Heppner’s, comes from Peter Mattei’s Chorèbe. The beauty of his voice and his expressivity is irresistible. You only have to listen to Mais le ciel et la terre (CD 1 tr. 5) to hear what I mean. Sara Mingardo’s Anna is also classy casting. Stephen Milling as Narbal sings his air in act IV (CD 3 tr. 3) warmly and beautifully, and the two lyrical tenors, Kenneth Tarver as Iopas and Toby Spence as Hylas, are excellent in their beautiful arias (CD 3 tr. 11 resp. CD 4 tr. 1) but even better in Hylas’s Vallon sonore is Ryland Davies on the Philips set.
Swings and roundabouts, perhaps, but it is almost unthinkable that it is possible to make a recording of a work as multi-faceted as Les Troyens without at least one or two flies in the ointment. To me this is a set that should satisfy even the most discriminating connoisseur, especially at Alto’s price.
Göran Forsling
