Les Troyens

Grand Opéra in five acts
Libretto: Hector Berlioz
German translation: Simon Werle
Vocal Score by Eike Wernhard based on a vocal score by H. Berlioz

Les Troyens: Preface

Berlioz composed Les Troyens towards the end of his life, drawing on Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid, which he had admired since his childhood. In his Memoirs he recounts how his father, a country doctor, read Virgil to him and how the story of Dido's tragic fate reduced him to tears which he tried hard to conceal. When he was in Italy in 1831-32 he thought often about Virgil and visited places with Virgilian associations. Twenty years later he began to plan a grand opera, intended for the Paris Opera, whichincluded scenes showing the sack of Troy after ten years of war and the later story of Aeneas and his band of Trojans seeking refuge from a storm on the shores of Carthage, Dido's realm. Ultimately Aeneas is compelled to abandon Dido since Destiny requires him to found the great city of Rome, leaving Dido to her self-immolation.
Such a plan required great fortitude, for Berlioz had become disillusioned with the state of music in France and was certain that his work would never be played there. It was only the unexpected success of L’Enfance du Christ in 1854 which persuaded him that he should undertake it.
Withdrawing from almost all his concert commitments in France and abroad, he embarked on the opera in April 1856, writing the libretto himself. As soon as the libretto was finished he composed the love duet in Act IV, “Nuit d’ivresse et d’extase infinie”, and then devoted the next two years to the composition of the rest, five acts in all.
The score was finished in April 1858, but he was unable to persuade the Paris Opera to mount it (his earlier opera Benvenuto Cellini had been a failure there in 1838), and eventually he agreed to allow the last three acts to be performed under the title Les Troyens Carthage. This took place at the Theatre Lyrique, an enterprising but ill-equipped theatre, in November 1863, and although it was much admired, there were no more performances before Berlioz’s death in 1869.
Berlioz also allowed the vocal score to be published as two separate operas, the first two acts being named La Prise de Troie, and since that time it has often been argued that it is two operas, not one. The first performance of the complete opera took place in Karlsruhe in 1890, split into two evenings, and productions today continue the practice. During Europe's long obsession with Wagner Berlioz's greatest work was set aside and was widely thought to be unperformable. But it is important to recognize that Berlioz was composing in the long tradition of French grand opera, and that long five-act operas had been played in Paris for many years. Meyerbeer’s works were the obvious precedent. But Berlioz was reaching back to Gluck and Spontini as dramatic models, for these are the composers whose works he most admired when he first arrived in Paris in the 1820s. He also felt strongly that Shakespeare's poetic spirit had inspired him; he even adapted some lines from The Merchant of Venice for the love duet in Act IV.
The complete opera was first staged as a single work in 1957 (at Covent Garden, London), and the full score was first published in 1969 (New Berlioz Edition). The present score is based on that edition, and it includes in an appendix two scenes which were omitted from Berlioz’s final plan. In Act I, after the appearance of Andromache and her son, there is a scene for the Greek spy Sinon, which Berlioz later removed, although its text helps to explain some of the action. The original ending of the opera included a pageant of the future glory of Rome of which traces are still to be found in the final version. No. 44, the duet for Dido and Aeneas, “Errante sur tes pas”, was a late addition to the opera. Other alternative texts and cuts are set out in full in Volume 2c of the New Berlioz Edition.
On 3 May 1861 Berlioz wrote in a letter: “I am sure that I have written a great work, greater and nobler than anything done hitherto.” Elsewhere he wrote: “The principal merit of the work is, in my view, the truthfulness of the expression.” For Berlioz the truthful representation of passion was the highest goal of a dramatic composer, and in this respect he felt he had equalled the achievements of Gluck and Mozart. In the history of French music, Les Troyens stand out as a grand opera that avoided the shallow glamour of Meyerbeer and Halevy, but therefore paid the price of long neglect. In our own time the opera has finally come to be seen as one of the greatest operas of the 19th century. Hugh Macdonald