Hector Berlioz
March from Les Troyens
In the spring of 1854, Hector Berlioz paid a visit to fellow composer Franz
Liszt in Weimar. Berlioz was already famous -- or infamous -- for creating works
of intense romanticism and huge scope such as Symphonie fantastique
(1830), the dramatic symphony Roméo et Juliette (1839), and his Requiem
(1838), which required an orchestra of 190, a chorus of 200, plus extra brass
and percussion. At Weimar, Liszt"s mistress, Princess Carolyn Sayn-Wittgenstein,
suggested that with such a background, Berlioz was ready to write a
"vast" operatic work.
Berlioz took up the challenge in 1856 and began writing a libretto based on
Virgil's Aeneid. The opera, Les Troyens (The Trojans), tells of
the sack of Troy and of the Trojan hero Aeneas who, while leading a band of
survivors to Italy to found a new city (Rome), falls in love with Dido, the
queen of Carthage. In his later memoirs, Berlioz explained that he chose Virgil’s
poem because it "first found the way to my heart and opened my budding
imagination, by speaking to me of epic passions." For his unquestionably
epic version of the story, Berlioz composed a grand and demanding score,
completing it in April of 1858. His five-act opera required two strong singing
actresses, a tenor who could rise to C above the staff, and a virtuosic chorus
-- 128 singers in all -- as well as 61 dancers, various acrobats, an orchestra
of 80 and three offstage bands. The entire spectacle, with 33 scene changes,
would take over four hours to perform.
Obviously, producing the complete opera was a costly and difficult
proposition, and so the work was never performed in its entirety during
Berlioz's lifetime. Instead, the Théâtre Lyrique of Paris premiered the last
three acts in November of 1863 under the title Les Troyens à Carthage.
The cast was stellar and the press enthusiastic, but the abbreviated version,
further cut after its first performances, disappointed and discouraged Berlioz.
Composer Charles Gounod believed that it was this disappointment that led to the
illness that Berlioz suffered in the mid 1860s, and to his eventual death.
"[Les Troyens] finished him," Gounod wrote; “like his
namesake, Hector, he died beneath the walls of Troy."
A year after his opera's abbreviated premiere, Berlioz arranged a concert
version of a march for the Trojan soldiers. The first half of the arrangement is
based on a march at the end of the first act, an energetic melody that was
originally meant to be augmented by a chorus and a troupe of acrobats. The final
segment is an adaptation of a portion of the final act, when Aeneas departs from
Carthage. Even without the spectacle, Berlioz's brassy and bombastic music is
stirring.
February 22, 2004
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