[Met Performance] CID:274160



Les Troyens
Metropolitan Opera House, Wed, October 12, 1983




Les Troyens (16)
Hector Berlioz | Hector Berlioz
Cassandra
Gwynn Cornell

Coroebus
Allan Monk

Aeneas
William Lewis

Ascanius
Claudia Catania

Priam
Ara Berberian

Hecuba
Barbara Conrad

Helenus
Ronald Naldi

Andromache
Jane White

Astyanax
Robert Sanchez

Panthus
Julien Robbins

Hector's Ghost
Morley Meredith

Trojan Soldier
Vernon Hartman

Dido
Jessye Norman

Anna
Jocelyne Taillon

Narbal
John Macurdy

Iopas
Douglas Ahlstedt

Mercury
Richard Vernon

Hylas
Philip Creech

Trojan Soldier
John Darrenkamp

Trojan Soldier
James Courtney

Cassandra's Ghost
Jean Kraft

Coroebus's Ghost
Allan Glassman

Dance
Linda Gelinas

Dance
Kimberly Graves

Dance
Deanne Lay

Dance
Antoinette Peloso

Dance
Marcus Bugler

Dance
Gary Cordial

Dance
Leonard Greco

Dance
Christopher Stocker

Dance
Fredrick Wodin


Conductor
James Levine







Review 1:

Review of Edward Rothstein in The New York Times
Opera: Miss Norman as Dido

Jessye Norman was reported to have been impressive as Cassandra in the open*ing performances of "Les Troyens" at the Metropolitan Opera this season, but Dido is a richer role, and on Wednesday night, when Miss Norman switched parts, she created a Carthaginian Queen who was both regal and vulnerable. It was a subtle and affecting dramatic portrait that made the production's abstract metallic sets and often bizarre costumes seem stark indeed in contrast.


She began as noble and authoritative, but then turned inward, became troubled, her voice melancholic and slightly edgy. By the final scenes, the Queen had turned into an Ophelia, writhing with inner pain accompanied by the outbursts and pants of the score. Her farewell aria was fluid and seductive, suggesting in its timbre both sensuous pleasures and death.


Here Carthage is undermined by the passion that the Trojan Aeneas awakes within the Queen, just as in the first part of the opera the Trojans are undermined by taking a wooden animal within their gates; both endings are all the more tragic because they begin as celebrations. Miss Norman never allowed any of this to remain mere myth. She turned it into an immediate and personal history.


Next to such a performance, William Lewis ? who has taken over the role of Aeneas from Placido Domingo ? had to have been left in the shadow, even in the haunting duet, "Nuit d'ivresse." But his was, for the most part a sturdy, well-executed performance, seeming just a bit weary and strained from its difficulties in the final act.


Substituting for Tatiana Troyanos, who was ill, Gwynn Cornell as Cassandra was almost the complement of Miss Norman's Dido. Miss Cornell may have, at times, made her prophetic pose too hard and strident, but the urgency and passion was effective nevertheless, and came through to the listener if not to the Trojans.



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