Another single instance will have to suffice as pointer to
the night's orchestral quality and Davis's gift of adducing 'Berlioz sound.' At the beginning of Act 2, Hector's ghost appears to kneas. The muted horns which haunt and chill this scene were precise, clear, dynamically balanced—and flesh-creeping—to a degree I had never imagined possible even in the concert hall. (In the theatre it is out of the question.) On the other hand, the Entry of the Horse and Trojan March, the opera's central climax, didn't altogether come off, not because one of the two offstage bands got briefly out of step but because the Festival Hall's acoustic, for all its recent improvement, cannot, I fear, give blend to tonal complexes as dispersed as this. The night's true climax was the wild, anguished hymn of the Trojan women bent on self-immolation amid sword-clash, conflagration and collapsing roofs, near the end. The noble, steely line produced by the women of the NP chorus was another thing Covent Garden couldn't have given us to save its crush room chandelier. (Not that I'm saying the theatre isn't the place where Les Troyens truly belongs.)
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