1/ Berlioz determined to set Books II-IV of The Aeneid. Book II becomes Acts 1&2 (La Prise de Troie) and Bks III & IV become Acts 3-5 (Les Troyens à Carthage). Together they are LES TROYENS. The gargantuan-ness of it provokes comparison to Wagner, esp. his GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG,
2/ which we will see later this week Thus equals in mammothosity, Berlioz may compete w Wagner on getting there first and win (1858), or on music and dramaturgy, and IMO *not* win. I’ve tried w Berlioz since I first listened to his DAMNATION DE FAUST a *long* time ago
3/ and i still don’t get what’s out of the ordinary about it, and the dramatic pace in TROYENS is, IMO, glacial. Maybe epic poetry doesn’t translate well to the stage: while there have been great plays and operas based on stories within Homer, and within Dante (yo, FRANCESCA DA
4/ RIMINI coming up tomorrow night!! 🤗😍), no one has successfully put on stage nearly half of a bona fide epic (as Berlioz attempts here). Yes, *of course*, if I listen to it a lot I’ll get to know it and there4 to like it. That’s true of any opera able to get itself staged.
5/ The difference with e.g. Wagner is that I only had to put DIE WALKÜRE on the stereo once, when I was six, and I was hooked. Great musical storytelling can, if given a chance, captivate even a little kid. I have TROYENS on now and it’s not musical storytelling on that level.
6/ OTOH it’s not musical storytelling on *no* level either, so you may want to look in on it as I’m doing. You’ll never see it better cast than w Deborah Voigt as Cassandre, Bryan Hymel as Enée, Susan Graham as Didon, Francesca Zambello directing, and Fabio Luisi conducting.

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More from @david_m_wagner

19 Dec
1/ They say NABUCCO was Verdi's breakout work. It was certainly the work with which he elevated the baritone from lyric to dramatic and from co-star to star. Only this time we have a late-career tenor in the part, returning to his long-ago baritone Fach. ("Fach" is German for
2/ "operatic vocal category," and all the jokes have been made so don't even try.) The title character is of course Nebuchadnezzar, so to those who've just been watching A Charlie Brown Christmas: "Sort of makes you want to treat me with more respect, doesn't it!" But this is an
3/ extra-Biblical tale of how Nebbie, having conquered Jerusalem, proclaimed himself God - and got a mentally disorienting zap for it. But gradually he recovers his wits and, against the odds, defeats the machinations of his power-hungry step-daughter Abigaille, saves the lives
Read 8 tweets
19 Dec
@HumphreyBohun Tbqh I cannot easily tell - at least by the supposedly most salient differences, orchestration and harmony- which one I’m hearing. My test is a line early in the Coronation Scene fanfares: the trumpets’ line goes *down* in “original,” *up* in Rimsky. But unless I hear
@HumphreyBohun representative snippets side-by-side, taste-test style, I’m not rly sure. And I put quotes around “original” bc - has anyone *really* ever heard it? In 1974 the Met made a big covfefe out of how they were at last using Mussorgsky’s original harmonies and orchestration. But
@HumphreyBohun after Maestro Thomas Schippers’s death, his BORIS score was found, and lo, he had made numerous changes in the rehearsal process. The 2010 new production (tonight’s version) has a musicologist it relies on, as the 1955 English-language production relied on Karol Rathaus.
Read 5 tweets
18 Dec
BORIS is on my desert-island list along with FRANCESCA. National epic, imperial whodunnit, Dostoevskian psychodrama, & soul-examination of Russian ppl - traumatized when the first non-Rurikid ruler took the throne and he may, *may*, have killed a Rurikid heir to do so.
2/ Along with same composer’s KHOVANSHCHINA and Borodin’s PRINCE IGOR, this is Russia’s operatic epic. Co-starring the People alongside the title character, it starts w the People, moves to Boris, then back to the People thru a monk-chronicler who, doing what’s possible with
3/ what’s available, gives the People their national story; then in to the unscrupulous rise of the Pretender - Самосванец, self-named - then back to Boris, to whom the Pretender’s choice of an identity is a goad to conscience and madness. Then over to Poland where the Pretender
Read 7 tweets
17 Dec
1/ Just re-upped my thread from when this was last shown. Not a lot to add. When ppl ask me "What's your favorite opera," this is my answer, bc, a., ppl with so little understanding of opera-fandom deserve to be stuck with an answer they almost certainly don't recognize, but b.
2/ bc it wd certainly make my top-ten list (and that's what opera fans do: "desert island" lists). I wish I understood how FRANCESCA happened: I guess, the right conjunction of composer, librettist (D'Annunzio!), period (medieval setting, composed in florescence of late
3/ romanticism), and nation (both native and expatriate literature in Italy were experiencing troubadour-fever in 1st 2 decades of 20thc). There are other Zandonai works, and collaborations by D'Annunzio w other composers, that deserve revival; but somehow their combination
Read 8 tweets
16 Dec
1/ Sorry 2b late - I was out owning this opera’s villainess Ortrud by going to an evening Mass. So we’ve got LOHENGRIN: mid-career Wagner, his last opera b4 embarking in THE RING. It’s a clash of Christian and pagan forces in early 10thc Duchy of Brabant. Elsa von Brabant
2/ is accused of killing her brother, Godfrey, the rightful Duke. She asks God to send her dream-knight to defend her - and He does! What’s more, they can get married if only she’ll refrain, forever, from asking his name or origin. This is a tall order, but Elsa promises it
3/ willingly, and it’s reason has to do with the inscrutable rules of the Grail, which this knight serves: if they become known, they must return. This condition provided the perfect entry point for Ortrud to play on Elsa’s doubts. Ortrud is a proud descendant of Radbod, the
Read 15 tweets
15 Dec
1/ “Epics” - in opera context this means anything with a mythical, ancient, or medieval setting. SAMSON is ancient. Saint-Saëns began it as an oratorio, which accounts for some of the odd dramaturgy in 1st half of Act 1: can the disconsolate crowd of Hebrews, barely roused
2/ by Samson’s stirring rhetoric, rly bump off Abimelech *and* ravage the Philistines’ fields in the time allotted to this in the score? With the High Priest arriving on the scene immediately? It grew more operatic as the composer went on, and it became a pinnacle of 19thc
3/ French opera. Samson’s mix if leadership and weakness, Delilah’s hate-filled but sensuous manipulation, and the cruelty and blasphemy of the High Priest of Dagon, are all made compelling in the music.
Read 10 tweets

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