Berlioz: Les Troyens (complete opera recorded in 2012)
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HECTOR BERLIOZ
Berlioz: Les Troyens (complete opera recorded in 2012)
Royal Opera House, Bryan Hymel, Anna Caterina Antonacci, Eva-Maria Westbroek / Antonio Pappano (cond)
[ Opus Arte DVD / 2 DVD ]
Release Date: Friday 1 November 2013
This item is currently out of stock. It may take 6 or more weeks to obtain from when you place your order as this is a specialist product.
Suitable for General Audiences
G :-
Les Troyens is a tour de force that ranges from fiery military marches to intense choruses, passionate soliloquies and the lyrical love duets of Dido and Aeneas. For Hector Berlioz, librettist and composer, the opera became the work of decades and the passion of a lifetime, the culmination of his literary love affair with Virgil's Aeneid and with two tragic heroines, Cassandra and Dido. David McVicar's staging is on an enormous scale, assembling one of the largest casts ever seen at Covent Garden. The sweeping theme of the rise and fall of empires runs throughout Les Troyens, along with moving meditations on love and honour.
GRAMOPHONE MAGAZINE AWARD NOMINATION 2014
"The singing cast is first rate. Berlioz himself was deeply moved by the figure of the doomed prophetess Cassandra and it pained him more than he could say that he would never hear her music sung. I am sure, though, that he would have been pleased with her portrayal by Anna Caterina Antonacci. She is a magnificent Cassandra, worthy to compare with the best of them. She is a very gifted tragedian as well as a superb singer, and her acting skills are helped by Rousillon's careful but not excessive use of close-up. On the whole, though, this release is a triumph.If you want Les Troyens on DVD, then you can buy this one with confidence."
(Recording of the Month MusicWeb Oct 2013)
"It's powerful in all senses, not least Antonio Pappano's conducting, which is dramatically hard-driven but not without atmosphere, making the love music luminously sensuous...The huge cast is uniformly good and sometimes exceptional - especially tenor Bryan Hymel's Aeneas...It's an intelligent, theatrically energetic staging." (DVD/Blu-ray Choice of the Month Five stars BBC Music January 2014)
"It is magnificent...McVicar marshals his huge forces with a sure hand and shows an impressive concern for detail...[Antonacci's] every phrase, every gesture, is mesmerising...Westbroek as Dido is so heartbreaking in the final scenes that you forget how dramatically inept they are; and Bryan Hymel is a match for Davis's Jon Vickers" (Gramophone)
