Les Troyens (review)

Cassandre/Didon: Deborah Polaski	Orchestre de Paris
Enée: Jon Villars	Salzburger Kammerphilharmonie
Chorèbe: Russell Braun	Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor
Panthée/Mercure: Tigran Martirossian	Slovak Philharmonic Choir Bratislava
Narbal: Robert Lloyd	Tölzer Knabenchor
Iopas: Ilya Levinsky	Conductor: Sylvain Cambreling
Ascagne: Gaële Le Roi	Staging/sets/costumes/lighting: Herbert Wernicke
Anna: Yvonne Naef	Video director: Alexandre Tarta
Hylas: Toby Spence	Sung in French, with subtitles
Priam: Gudjon Oskarsson	ArtHaus Musik (distributed by Naxos of
Ghost of Hector: Detlef Roth	America) 100 351
Trojan soldier: Frédéric Caton	2 DVDs, color, stereo, 257 minutes
Salzburg Festival 2000

Until now, fans of Les Troyens have had but one video version of Berlioz's opera at their disposal—albeit a worthy one (see the preceding review). The bicentennial year has doubled the field of choice with the release of this ArtHaus Musik DVD of the 2000 Salzburg Festival staging by the late director/designer Herbert Wernicke. It is competitive with the Met video, except, perhaps, in the area of musical completeness; however, even that single potential drawback becomes, in the context of the performance, something of an advantage.

In eliminating the ballet divertissements in acts 1, 3, and 4 as well as eschewing traditional Romantic stage trappings, Wernicke deemphasizes the grand-opera period flavor of the work and brings the human conflict to the fore. The mythic element remains present, though seen from a minimalist perspective: the stark basic set, used throughout, consists of a high, white, concave cyclorama, narrowly split in the center to reveal changing colorful images of Mediterranean sea and sky, as well as people and objects symbolic of the action; through the chink in the wall we see only an ominous glimpse of the Wooden Horse being dragged into Troy. A narrowly raked main stage floor is cracked diagonally across, allowing it to halve apart to provide the ghosts crawl space from the Underworld. we see through the chink in the wall of the Wooden Horse being dragged into Troy. The Royal Hunt and Storm leaves the orgy of nymphs and fauns to the imagination, presenting essentially only Didon and Enée on an empty, forest green-lit stage and having them walk slowly toward each other until they "unite" in an embrace at the tempest's climax.

The action of the opera is "universalized" not only by the neutral settings but also by the uniform costuming: Trojans and Carthaginians all wear black or navy-blue—women in long dresses or gowns, townsmen in modern suits-and-ties or tuxedos, soldiers in World War II-era coats and helmets and bearing rifles and machine guns, and so on. For a much needed splash of color symbolism, the Trojans all wear bright red gloves, while the people of Carthage wear royal blue ones.

Casting one soprano in the pivotal roles of Cassandre and Didon helps to narrow the gap between the opening fall of Troy episode and the Carthaginian acts, and Deborah Polaski carries off the daunting dual assignment with flying colors. Histrionically, it is not so much the wide range of her dramatic portrayal as it is the unflagging dignity and strength of character she brings to both parts that impress most about her performance. In her hands, Cassandre's presentiment of doom and Didon's fatal resignation become two sides of the same coin. This limits the range of expression she is able to give to her characterization of Didon, who in this production seems constantly distanced from the reality of the moment. The singer's amazing vocal endurance owes much to an ability to objectify emotional expression with an apparent minimum of glottal tension and strain.

The young American tenor Jon Villars is a somewhat low-intensity hero, visually more credible in Enée's act 4 couch-potato phase than in his calls to arms. He meets the challenge of the high tessitura well enough, without erasing the memory of the excitement that another tenor with the same first name and last initial...