Berlioz ‘Troyens’ in Concert, Still Thrilling at Half-Size
/By Truman C. Wang
1/18/2025
Photo credit: Seattle Opera
russell thomas and J’Nai Bridges as dido and aeneas. photo by david jaewon oh
It was a historic Seattle Opera premiere – Hector Berlioz’s four-hour Trojan epic, truncated down to two hours in length, but with full orchestral and choral forces. The Troy acts (1 & 2) are omitted, as well as parts of the Carthage acts (3, 4 & 5) involving a comical subplot of two sentinels. Also cut is most of the 30-minute ballet music, save for the ballet of slaves. The Carthage acts, originally three in number, are refashioned into two acts, with act 1 ending awkwardly on the soft notes following Anna-Narbal’s duet.
There’s a lot to be said for performing “Troy” and “Carthage” on consecutive evenings (or matinee and evening performances on same day). Les Troyens is one work, as Berlioz insisted, but so is The Ring. And Berlioz’s drama is powerful enough to carry an audience through a dinner intermission or a day’s break.
Whatever reservations one might have about Seattle Opera’s pruning and pollarding of Les Troyens, one must admit it heightens the drama by focusing on the two protagonists’ love and hate relationship, amidst a backdrop of political turmoil and nature’s fury. Despite being a concert performance, the clever lighting, silvery décor and striking wardrobe all conspired to give a satisfying, larger-than-life, feel to this half-size Troyens.
J’Nai Bridges, as Dido, the Queen of Carthage, was remarkable. She has majesty and dignity befitting a queen, and a lovely softness of grain in her timber which melted into the throbbing strains of the love duet. In the great final sequence of monologue, air “Adieu, fière cite” and suicide scene she found a new passion and intensity, both as a singer and as an actress.
Russell Thomas was Aeneas. His clarion tones were forceful in the heroic entrance, but ungainly in the love duet. The exaggerated acuti and slancio in his singing, exciting in Italian opera, sounded uncomfortably at odds with the mellifluous elegance of the French style. The high notes of Aeneas’ battle cry before rushing to join the departing Trojan fleet came off as pinched rather than ringing.
An excellent team of comprimari sang the small but vital roles of Trojans and Carthagians: John Matthew Myers (Iopas), Tess Altiveros (Ascanius), Andrew Potter (Panthous), Richard L. Hodges (Mercury, Priam) – with Kelley O’Connor (Anna) and Adam Lau (Narbal) being two standouts.
Ludovic Morlot, the conductor from Lyon, France, was capable, energetic, sensitive, and took on the special quality – easier to recognize than to define – that distinguishes the true Berlioz interpreter. Richard Muti once declared that a concert performance may well provide a more honest account of an opera than some of today’s regietheater productions do.
Despite the fact that Seattle’s Troyens is more about the Carthagians than the Trojans, that should not deter anyone from experiencing this rare operatic gem. Come for the brilliant music and exciting singing by a powerhouse cast and, lest I forget, the topnotch, thrilling 60-strong Seattle Opera Chorus.
One more performance on Sunday 2pm, January 19 at McCaw Hall.
Truman C. Wang is Editor-in-Chief of Classical Voice, whose articles have appeared in the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, other Southern California publications, as well as the Hawaiian Chinese Daily. He studied Integrative Biology and Music at U.C. Berkeley.