Imagine an empty stage apron with a black curtain behind it on which a beautiful woman with flowing blond air, all in white, is kneeling and pouring out expressive, rich sound, her words filled with an exquisite and resigned acceptance of fate, and you will have some idea of how Susan Graham realized the section of Berlioz Les Troyens that begins with “Je vais mourir” and concludes with “Adieu, fiere cite”. Her performance as Dido of the penultimate scene of this great work at the San Francisco Opera on June 16 capped a great production and will live in my memory.
From the beginning of the Carthage scenes she dominated the stage, not as a prima donna, but as the embodiment of the character. She has done the role several times before but with the remarkable conducting of Donald Runnicles and the excellent production of David McVicar her interpretation achieved unforgettable richness and depth.
As the happy Dido in the first part of her scenes, the queen who falls in love with Aeneas, and the woman who revels in their love she was equally persuasive. When she mounted the funeral pyre in the last scene and envisioned first a triumphal Hannibal and then eternal Rome, she brought vividly to life what affected Berlioz so much in his childhood. Her performance in short was what makes opera what it can be.
Runnicles has some history with this opera, and his reading pulsed not only with energy throughout but with unusual fervor in the heated Trojan scenes and romantic intensity in the much more extended Carthaginian segment. He made such difficult, often static moments as the presentation of the Carthaginians to the queen and the various dance segments both meaningful and connected to the rest of the opera. The great sequence of the Royal Hunt and Storm had tremendous color and pulse and the conclusion of Troy terrifying.
McVicar’s production, which is a coproduction of the Royal Opera Covent Garden, the Teatro la Scala, and the Vienna State Opera, with sets by Es Devlin, costumes by Moritz Junge, and lighting by Wolfgang Goebbel, solves more problems with Berlioz’ masterpiece than any of the four other interpretations of this work that I have attended. It certainly has the greatest Trojan horse—a huge monolith of metal (I know it’s supposed to be wood, but I loved it anyway) that is big enough, it seemed to me, to house a lot of Greeks, a great concept of the desolate and besieged Troy, a warm and happy Carthage, a good sense of the ships in the final act, and a great funeral pyre. The production might be faulted for trying literally to convey all that Berlioz put in his libretto, but it succeeded so often that I can find nothing about which to complain. The death of the Trojan women, for instance, had a reality that was compelling, and though Cassandra might have seemed really crazy, her actions certainly did not distort the text. The costumes of the various soldiers didn’t make a lot of sense to me, particularly the Greeks as British redcoats even if they were supposed to be somehow living in Berlioz’ time, but these are infinitesimal points. All in all this Troyens was a visual and theatrical experience to be treasured
Anna Caterina Antonacci sang Cassandra’s heated music with abandon, accuracy and total involvement. Not since Shirley Verrett’s Cassandra many years ago at the Metropolitan do I remember such a convincingly doomed, overwrought, believable Cassandra.
Many of the other singers were standouts: Sasha Cook sang the best Anna, Dido’s sister, I have ever heard. Her voice slightly darker than Susan Graham’s, she made the duet with her sister remarkable and was equally effective in her duet with Narbal. Her presence throughout, warm, supportive and loving, made a character, often almost invisible, important. The role of Iopas, who entertains Dido’s court with an aria hailing Dido as a blonde Ceres, found Rene Barbera completely in command of the difficult piece, singing with grace and polish. It was an outstanding performance. Brian Mulligan made a remarkable Corebus, bringing to his duet with Cassandra, a strong and fresh baritone that brought a new dimension to this role. Christian Van Horn turned in a satisfactory Narbal. In the vast cast all the other lesser roles were well taken, and the dancers made gripping and entertaining the sections that can seem long.
Bryan Himmel, the scheduled Aeneas, was ill. His replacement, Corey Bix, coped with the incredibly difficult role, singing all the notes but not attaining the level of the other principals.
How lucky you were, Speight, to see a performance where most everything clicked. It doesn’t happen too often. But when it does, the pleasure is enormous.