Opera
The Trojans at the Opera
By DAVID CAIRNS
hon. : between Royer and
%ea To Berlioz the Paris Opera was 'musically speaking a house of ill fame. And, last Saturday, confronting his bust on the second floor of that institution, in its place of
Garoei, I could see what he was thinking: the old place hadn't changed. There was a certain fixity of expression in his eye, as of a man who pretends hard not to notice. Yet, when the news got round last year that Paris was to put on 1 he Trojans for the first time since 1921, and later, in the spring, we were told that the Opera was actually being closed for ten days (an action almost unprecedented in peace time) for uninterrupted rehearsals, even a normally sceptical spirit could reasonably look forward to something out of the ordinary, an act of reparation to a neglected masterpiece. In the event, the chorus went on strike and The Trojans was postponed, and by the time it re- appeared on the bills the chosen conductor, Mr. Kubelik, had dropped out. Whether, had the work been given last spring, he would have knocked enough sense and style into the per- formers to achieve a decent likeness of the music is a futile, though poignant, speculation. The fact is that under his successor, M. Pierre Dervaux, the musical side of the performance was of a quality hardly to be described without malice.
Let me, however, attempt to do so with the sternest objectivity by citing cast-iron evidence of the crime. The staging was that seen at La Scala, Milan, in 1960, with decor by Piero Zuffi and production by Margherita Wallmann. Unfortu- nately, along with the scenery, and imported like Colorado beetle in the baggage, the Opera seems to have used the same full score and set of parts as La Scala, and taken the cuts it found there as stimulus for much more extensive and ferocious mutilations. Now the Milan cuts were bad enough : they included a chunk out of the middle of the Love Duet, the andante section of Aeneas's aria and the duet of Anna and Narbal. But where Milan slew its thousands Paris has slain its tens of thousands. The Opera restored a few passages, notably Aeneas's andante and about ninety bars of hOlcebus's music in the first act; but that this was more for the gratification of individual vanity than out of respect for the intentions of the composer can be seen from the treatment meted e II to other less glamorous pas- sages. In all, according to my estimate (made from a perusal of the score on the morning after), some 1,600 bars were removed, nearly three- quarters of them from The Trojan.% at Carthage.
I do not say The Trojans should never be shorn of anything but its ballets. Its length is a problem even in opera houses where the sacri- fice of social niceties to artistic ones involved in bringing up the curtain before eight o'clock is not beyond the pale of civilised living; but the problem is not to be solved by the primitive surgery employed at the Opera. There is a case that can just be made on grounds of time for leaving out the Anna/Narbal duet or the tale. well scene between Aeneas and Dido. But there is no conceivable justification for tearing out passages of a handful of bars from the heart of an integral musical movement, such a.. the exci- sion of two bars from the ensemble on the death of Laocoon, seven bars from the end of Cas- sandra's first aria, and forty bars from the mar- vellous orchestral conclusion of the opening scene in Carthage—three cuts which amount to 4 saving of less than two minutes.
It is hardly surprising that M. Dervaux should show, even in the music he deigned to include, the feeblest grasp of idiom and a genius for the wrong tempo. He was forever whacking the score along—the introduction to Cassandra's first scene, for instance, was almost twice as fast as Berlioz's marking—yet when pace and brio were demanded he contrived to drag miserably. Among the cast Guy Chauvet's Aeneas was re- markable for golden top notes and leaden musi- cal understanding. Regine Crespin's Dido began admirably, bringing grace and warmth to the moribund scene; but she foundered in a welter of cuts and a production which was formal in a mainly negative way. The sets, more imagina- tively lit than in Milan, were better than I re- membered, the production worse. There was one particularly exquisite moment of tragi-comedy when M. Chauvet, snatching himself from the embrace of Madame Crespin, waddled across the stage to receive the sceptre from the hands of Mercury, before returning to his former posi- tion; but by that time, like that grim-visaged bust on the second floor. I was beyond either tears or laughter.
For the record, the following is my reckoning of the passages cut at the Opera, in the order in which they occur.
La Prise de Troie : the allegro vivace chorus in C major, entire; the orchestral epilogue of Cassandra's aria; two cuts amounting to some fifteen bars from the Cassandra/Choroebus duet; the ballet 'Combat de Ceste,' entire; ten bars from the ensemble 'Chatiment ettroyable'; about thirty bars from the procession of the Trojan Horse; forty-nine bars (entry of Ascanius) from the introduction to the scene in Aeneas's tent; forty bars from the ensemble of Trojan warriors; about sixty-two bars from the scene in the Temple of Vesta. Les Troyens a Carthage : the opening chorus in E flat, entire; the repeats in the first and the final statement of the Cartha- ginian national anthem; the version of the anthem in B fiat; the recapitulation of Dido's `Chers Tyriens'; all the ballets; twenty-two bars from the allegro moderato section of the Dido/Anna duet and sixteen bars from the andantino section; the whole of Dido's 'Errante sur les mers'; forty bars from the orchestral conclusion of the en- semble of Carthaginians and Trojans in B major; the scene between Anna and Narbal, entire; the repeats in the first ballet; the second ballet, entire; lopas's song, entire, and twenty-one bars of surrounding music; forty-six bars from the Love Duet; the second verse of the sailor's song; a dozen bars from the ensemble of Trojan war- riors; the sentinels' duet, entire; the scene between Dido and Aeneas, 'Errante sur tes pas.' entire; eight bars from the Trojan March in the following scene; sixty bars from the scene in Dido's Room; fifty bars from the Priest's Chorus.
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