Berlioz's Les Troyens is a masterful 4+ hour opera that somehow encapsulates about 500 years of history on the backs of two humans, Dido and Aeneas. How two normal humans managed to live from the time of the Trojan War, approximately 1200BC, to the founding of Carthage by Queen Dido in 814BC, and ending with the founding of Rome around 700BC, we'll never know, but boy, did this opera hit all the right spots!
First and foremost, if you like spectacles with your performance arts, then you must go to this production. The set and staging for this opera is, well, Wagnerian, to misapply a phrase.
Of course, no story about the Trojan War would exclude the Trojan Horse. This opera did it with a monstrous 23 foot tall structure that one could easily imagine being hauled around Black Rock Desert during Burning Man week. The imposing and frightening horse head representing the Trojan Horse was a sight to behold. The music was almost a secondary effect to support the prop, as opposed to the other way around.
Whether Berlioz was competing with Wagner, his contemporary, on making the next big thing in opera is questionable, but they both did take pleasure in borrowing musical elements from each other. Whereas Wagner kept to his motifs (which Les Troyens did not include), Berlioz's grand opera had an Italianate feel. Indeed, it appears to me that the opera would have sounded better had it been sung in Italian than in French.
The opera included all the key players from both the Greek and Roman mythologies. There was Cassandra the nay-sayer (who was right, though), Hector, Priam, Aeneas, Dido. It was strange to hear they call out to Roman gods like Venus, Jupiter and Mars. I guess back then (either Berlioz's time or the actual Ancient Greece time) there was a lot of leeway on choosing your gods' names.
But back to the staging and the opera. This production had everything: the Burning Man art pieces, parkour gymnastics, pyrotechnics, cast of a thousand, and even a nod to George Lucas's vision of Tatooine. The third and fourth acts were set in Carthage and the set had the look of Tatooine from Episode I, Phantom Menace.
I strongly urge your attendance before it's over. You'll greatly enjoy the whole spectacle.
First and foremost, if you like spectacles with your performance arts, then you must go to this production. The set and staging for this opera is, well, Wagnerian, to misapply a phrase.
Of course, no story about the Trojan War would exclude the Trojan Horse. This opera did it with a monstrous 23 foot tall structure that one could easily imagine being hauled around Black Rock Desert during Burning Man week. The imposing and frightening horse head representing the Trojan Horse was a sight to behold. The music was almost a secondary effect to support the prop, as opposed to the other way around.
Whether Berlioz was competing with Wagner, his contemporary, on making the next big thing in opera is questionable, but they both did take pleasure in borrowing musical elements from each other. Whereas Wagner kept to his motifs (which Les Troyens did not include), Berlioz's grand opera had an Italianate feel. Indeed, it appears to me that the opera would have sounded better had it been sung in Italian than in French.
The opera included all the key players from both the Greek and Roman mythologies. There was Cassandra the nay-sayer (who was right, though), Hector, Priam, Aeneas, Dido. It was strange to hear they call out to Roman gods like Venus, Jupiter and Mars. I guess back then (either Berlioz's time or the actual Ancient Greece time) there was a lot of leeway on choosing your gods' names.
But back to the staging and the opera. This production had everything: the Burning Man art pieces, parkour gymnastics, pyrotechnics, cast of a thousand, and even a nod to George Lucas's vision of Tatooine. The third and fourth acts were set in Carthage and the set had the look of Tatooine from Episode I, Phantom Menace.
I strongly urge your attendance before it's over. You'll greatly enjoy the whole spectacle.
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