The Trojans
Sir: If your opera critic, Rodney Milnes, chooses languidly to parade before your readers his singular lack of musical sensibility by describing Berlioz's great masterpiece, The Trojans, as " this long and unutterably boring opera" (September 30), one's first reaction is to pity rather than censure him.
Indeed, I would not normally regard such a statement as worthy of rebuttal, but on this occasion feel compelled to speak on behalf of many thousands of opera lovers in expressing the gratitude we feel towards Covent Garden, and espe
cially to Rafael Kubelik and to Colin Davis, for having over the past fifteen years enriched our experience by their performances of this long-neglected, yet incomparably beautiful and exciting, profoundly moving and, above all, life-enhancing work. Actually, what concerns me here is not the juxtaposition of diametrically opposed critical viewpoints — my ardent response versus Mr Milnes's boredom — but the possibility that someone, somewhere, could have taken your critic's remarks sufficiently to heart to forgo the chance of seeing the opera for the first time and of forming his or her own judgement.
Of course, such a person might have been bored, like your critic. but the odds are that he or she would have echoed the wonder and mounting excitement with which I first confronted The Trojans in 1957 (feelings which, even after fifteen years, are renewed each time I see or hear the opera!), or shared the astonishment of the noted American critic, Irving Kolodin, who likened the impact of first hearing Colin Davis's record
ing of the opera to beholding the Grand Canyon for the first time ...
In conclusion, let me urge Covent Garden to revive The Trojans once more as soon as they are able, for there are still all too many music lovers within reach of London who have yet to see the opera in the theatre and with whom the present writer and those who acclaimed the recent series of performances are eager to share an experience without which our lives would have been much the poorer.
Thomas Heinitz 60 Maida Vale, London W9
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