Tag: LES TROYENS

Coming Out ~ 50 Years Ago Today

On October 27th, 1973, after spending a very long time in the closet, I had my first gay sexual experience. It was both thrilling and a bit frightening, but what I remember most was a great feeling of relief…and then wondering why it had taken me so long to do it.

That day, I had spent the long afternoon with several of my opera-friends at The Met watching LES TROYENS It was my first time seeing this monumental work, and it was unbearably exciting. Among the group was Z, the boy I had set my sights on since moving back home from Houston earlier in the year.

Looking back, it all seemed pre-arranged, but at the time it felt spontaneous. After the Berlioz matinee, our friends all went their separate ways. But Z and I had 5th Ring tickets for an evening performance of FAUST at the New York City Opera. He sat in front of me in the single seats, whilst I was aching with desire; at this point, nothing had been said about spending the night together.

After Marguerite had succumbed to Faust’s poetic charms in the Garden Scene, we mutually decided it was time to leave. Z looked at his watch and announced that he’d missed the “last bus” home. Haltingly I said, “You can stay with me at the hotel.”

We walked over to the Henry Hudson; nothing much was being said. We stayed up for a while, talking opera, and then it was time. He sat on the twin bed, undressing. “Should I sleep in the chair?” he asked. “I’ve slept in smaller beds with bigger people…” I replied. (This was a lie; I had only ever slept with my girlfriend, and always in big beds).

So, keeping our briefs on, we got under the covers and turned out the lights. For what felt like an eternity, nothing happened. I began to think that maybe I had mis-read the situation and that we were simply going to sleep together. He had his back to me; the warmth and smell of his body were killing me. Suddenly, I put my arms around him, and several wonderful things happened.

After a while, we grew drowsy. “I’ve never done this before,” I said sleepily. “Me neither!” he replied. Keeping him in my arms, we drifted off.

Waking to daylight, I got quickly out of bed and got dressed: I was meeting friends for breakfast. Z was groggy; he dressed slowly. I assumed he would head home, but – without saying anything – he tagged along to the diner.

Our friends were obviously intrigued when we showed up together, but nothing was said. Only the quiet, bookish TJ looked at me knowingly. The conversation turned to the inevitable topic – opera – and my magical “morning after” became just another day.

The aftermath: in the ensuing weeks, whenever I was in New York City, Z was friendly on the surface, but evasive on a personal level. He stood me up for a couple of lunch dates. I was naive enough to think that, because we had shared a sweet experience, we would become lovers. I became distraught.

Unhappy to the core, I confided in TJ. He listened to my story patiently, then told me that Z already had a boyfriend and that he was unlikely to become the lover I was looking for. TJ and I spent more and more time together, and I became very comfortable with him as my confidante. Finally, I invited him to visit me in the little town. Our first night was awkward: I was such a novice, but he – who was four years younger than me – was already pretty experienced, starting with having been raped by his college roommate.

Over time, TJ and I developed a deep relationship; he invited me to spend the summer of 1974 with him on Cape Cod, working for a small-time ballet company. At summer’s end, I drove him to Sarah Lawrence where his senior year was about to begin.

Our unspoken plan was to resume our lives – he at school and me back in the little town – and see each other whenever I came to the City. As we sat in the car saying goodbye, he suddenly started crying; it was then that I realized how strong our attachment was. Instead of leaving, I spent the night in the dorm with him. I left the next morning, but a few days later I received a letter from him, asking me to come and live with him in the dorm.

This was the beginning of my life, really. When TJ had finished school, we moved to Hartford, where I spent the next 22 years. After a year, our domestic life faltered when I became smitten with someone else. TJ and I had a bad break-up, and he never spoke to me again. I embarked on a long and promiscuous journey, having a strange tendency to fall in love with everyone I slept with.

Meanwhile, my ultimate goal – to be living in New York City before my 50th birthday – loomed before me. At times, I thought it would never happen; but by a simple twist of fate, I moved to My City three months before the date I had set for myself.

~ Oberon

October 26, 2023
Opera’s Greatest Love Duet

Béatrice Uria-Monzon and Roberto Alagna are seen in both rehearsal and performance of “Nuit d’ivresse“, the love duet from Hector Berlioz’ LES TROYENS from a concert given at Marseille in 2013. Lawrence Foster conducts.

Watch and listen here.

September 22, 2022
Opera’s Greatest Love Duet

Béatrice Uria-Monzon and Roberto Alagna are seen in both rehearsal and performance of “Nuit d’ivresse“, the love duet from Hector Berlioz’ LES TROYENS from a concert given at Marseille in 2013. Lawrence Foster conducts.

Watch and listen here.

September 21, 2022
Ô Lumière de Troie!

Above: The Ghost of Hector appears to Aeneas; Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904)

Hector Berlioz’s LES TROYENS is a unique masterpiece. The libretto was written by Berlioz himself, drawn from Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid. The two-part opera was composed between 1856 and 1858. Berlioz did not live to see a complete performance of the work.

Every time I listen to LES TROYENS, I’m thrilled by its power, mystery, and tragic sense of doom. The scene where the slumbering Aeneas is visited by the Ghost of Hector has become, over the years, a particularly moving one for me.

AENEAS:

“Oh, light of Troy!…Oh, glory of the Trojans!
From what fated region do you return? Your eyes are veiled.
Hector, what summons you back from the dead?”

THE GHOST OF HECTOR:

“Ah!… flee, son of Venus!
The enemy is within our walls! The whole of Troy crumbles!
A hurricane of flames engulfs our temples and palaces.
To save the soul of Troy
Pergamus commands you: Go, seek Italy!
After a perilous journey over the waves,
You shall found a mighty empire
That shall dominate the world.
There, a hero’s death awaits you.”

The Trojan soldiers rush in, confirming that the city is being destroyed. Aeneas leads them into the fray.

PRISE DE TROIE ~ O lumière de Troie! – Nicolai Gedda – Plinio Clabassi – RAI 1969

May 19, 2022
Nadine Denize as Cassandra

In this rare recording from the 1978 Ravinia Festival, mezzo-soprano Nadine Denize sings Cassandra’s monologue, “Malheureux roi!” from Berlioz’s LES TROYENS. Following a brief pause, the final moments of the Cassandra-Chorebus duet are heard.

Nadine Denize as Cassandre ~ LES TROYENS – Levine cond – Ravinia 1978

April 20, 2017
Score Desk for LES TROYENS

Cassandra:

“Malheureux roi! dans l’éternelle nuit,
C’en est donc fait, tu vas descendre!
Tu ne m’écoutes pas,
tu ne veux rien comprendre,
Malheureux peuple,
à l’horreur qui me suit!”

Saturday December 29, 2012 – The dilemma of whether or not to attend a performance of Berlioz’s LES TROYENS at the Met concerned me for a few days. This epic masterwork is one of the greatest operas ever written, unique in its structure (it is actually almost like two distinct operas; each could stand on its own), and it is a veritable goldmine of musical marvels. On a personal note, the opera plays a stellar role in my autobiography, since it was after a magnificent 1973 matinee performance of the Berlioz work that I had my long-awaited first homosexual experience. Normally it would be on my highest-priority list of operas to see in any Met season where it’s presented. But the combination of a production that has never really satisfied me visually, a conductor who has seldom – if ever – moved me, and the disastrous casting of two of the opera’s principal roles, I at first wrote it off completely.

But then the thought that I might never again have an opportunity to hear LES TROYENS in-house decided me in favor of going; not needing to see the production, I bought a score desk and waited for the day with a mixture of excitement and dread. A few days before the performance, one of the singers whose participation was troubling me – Marcelo Giordani – was announced as ‘withdrawing’ from the remainder of the run after a reportedly awful night at the prima folllowed by vocal struggles in the ensuing performances. His announced replacement, Bryan Hymel, has been making a name for himself of late in some of opera’s most demanding roles.

I arrived at the theatre to find another last-minute cast change: Elizabeth Bishop (above) was to sing Dido instead of Susan Graham. This was my second experience of hearing Ms. Bishop in a performance originally scheduled for Graham, and though I’d been looking forward to Graham’s Dido, Bishop was perfectly fine. So I settled in with my lovely old scores (one for each ”opera’), wishing for a different maestro and different Cassandra, but very much anticipating both the music and the singing of the other cast members.

The opera opened impressively with the lively chorus depicting the joy of the Trojan people who have discovered that the Greeks, who have besieged their city for a decade, have suddenly and inexplicably departed. Sadly, the afternoon then took a real slump as Deborah Voigt began Cassandra’s great opening monolog. Voigt’s voice has declined even further than from my last encounter with her in the theatre, and her singing of this iconic role was pallid; the voice is almost unrecognizable as the soprano who once thrilled me with her Ariadne and Elsa. Unsteady and small of scale, her singing seemed apologetic for the most part, with only very few notes that bore any relation to what she once sounded like. Her final high-B in the duet with Chorebus was desperate and unpleasant, and she simply lacked the expressive dramatic thrust for the great scene in which Cassandra tries to prevent the populace from bringing the giant horse within the city walls. And she was ineffectual in the opera’s great final scene. The role calls for forceful declamation and sweeping emotional conviction: a larger-than-life feel. That Voigt could not come within hailing distance of such great interpreters of the role as Shirley Verrett and Jessye Norman was indeed sad. Her shortcomings prevented the first half of the afternoon from making its usual vivid impression.

In 1994 Dwayne Croft replaced Thomas Hampson as Chorebus on a Saturday matinee broadcast of TROYENS; he sang superby that day and seemed in fine voice this afternoon until suddenly, near the end of the big duet with Cassandra, his voice seemed to go hoarse. Bryan Hymel made an impressive entry as Aeneas, his singing both beautiful and urgent. In the great scene where Aeneas is warned by the Ghost of Hector of Troy’s impending doom, Hymel and David Crawford were both excellent.

In the haunting scene where the widowed Andromache brings her young son before the court, her injection of a stifled shriek was perhaps unnecessary in what is written as a silent role. But here Ms. Voigt as Cassandra did have one of her fine moments as she quietly intoned her warning to Andromache: “Save your tears, widow of Hector! Disasters yet to come will make you weep long and bitterly”.

Though lacking a commanding Cassandra to lead them, the scene of the mass suicide of the Trojan women managed to make a very strong impression. Thus far, as the first part of TROYENS came to a close, Fabio Luisi’s conducting had been ‘factual’, each musical “i” dotted and “t” crossed (as per the score) but lacking in mystery and mythic grandeur. His pacing was on the quick side, which is fine.

Moving to Carthage, Luisi and his players seemed to find a more congenial glow in the music. I must commend the conductor for making the ballet music (which could just as well have been cut) fully palatable; and from Iopas’ serenade thru the grand septet and on to the end of the sublime love duet, Luisi gave what was for me his finest music-making to date at the Met.

Elizabeth Bishop’s voice is not creamy and opulent but she’s a fine singer and not only did she save the day, she did so with distinction. Establishing herself in the opening public scene, it was in the more intimate settings that follow where Bishop made her finest mark: the ravishing duet with her sister Anna and then – impressing in both tonal allure and poetic nuances – from “Tout conspire a vaincre mes remords” straight thru to end end of the “Nuit d’ivresse”. In the anger of the fiery quayside duet, and in her later expressions of regret, and of futile fury, Bishop brought some touches of verismo passion which worked well for her. In the stately, resigned “Adieu fiere cite” she was at her most poignant, then rousing herself yet again vocally to bring the opera to a close with her visionary “Rome!…Rome!…immortelle!” As the afternoon progressed, Bishop dispelled the disappointment of not hearing Ms. Graham, and the audience greeted her affectionately at her curtain calls.

Above: Bryan Hymel. Mr. Hymel’s Aeneas was marvelous and his type of voice – a liquid and juicy ‘big-lyric’ with a blooming top – is very well-suited to the music. Wagnerian tenors like Jon Vickers, Gary Lakes and Ben Heppner have often been heard in this role (Vickers managed to make it very much his own), and Placido Domingo handled it impressively despite its being too high for him. But for me the best rendering of this arduous music in living memory has come from Nicolai Gedda on an abridged RAI concert recording. In vocal size and stylistic grace, Hymel comes close to the Gedda ideal. A trace of sharpness crept in here and there, but from his tender farewell to his son Ascagne right thru to his final “Italie!” as Aeneas’ ships cast off for to their destiny, Hymel sang beautifully and had the audience in the palm of his hand.

He and Ms. Bishop found the magical blend that makes the love duet one of opera’s most memorable, and in his great scena “Inutile regrets” with its remorseful “Quand viendra l’istante” and the high-lying concluding ‘cabaletta’, Hymel was glorious. His singing was full-toned and expressive, encompassing some lovely piano effects, and so moving with his heartfelt “A toi mon ame!”; the audience reacted with excited cheers as the tenor swept to the sensational climax of this great scene, then drew our further admiration as he led his soldiers aboard ship to take leave of Carthage.

There are two more tenor roles in LES TROYENS A CARTHAGE and both were ideally sung today. In Iopas’ wondrously evocative (and very exposed) “O blonde Ceres” Eric Cutler (above) gave the afternoon’s most fascinating vocalism, with lovely line and ravishingly heady piano effects, and a spine-tingling ascent to a gloriously lyrical high-C. Bravo!!!

Above: Paul Appleby. In the homesick song of the young sailor Hylas, Mr. Appleby’s beautifully plaintive timbre and the haunting colours he wove into the words made this another high point of the day.

Above: Karen Cargill. I had very much enjoyed Ms. Cargill’s Waltraute last season and was glad of a chance to hear her again as Anna. There’s a touch of Marilyn Horne in Cargill’s voice and she sang her two big duets (one with Dido, the second with Narbal) most appealingly.

Kwangchul Youn’s voice is warm and sizeable; his tone seems to have taken on a steady beat now though he handled it quite well. His Narbal was pleasing, and he was also cast as Mercury, his voice bringing an ominous feel as he intones “Italie! Italie!” after the great love duet, reminding Aeneas of his duty and sealing Dido’s fate.

Richard Benstein was a strong-toned and authoritative Panthus and I very much liked hearing old-stagers Julien Robbins (Priam) and James Courtney (2nd Soldier) again. Julie Boulianne was a fine Ascagne, Theodora Hanslowe was Hecuba, and Paul Corona shared the soldiers’ scene with Mr. Courtney.

I so enjoyed experiencing this masterwork in-house again; it may not have been a perfect performance, but it certainly made for a very satisfying afternoon. So nice to see my friend Susan there, and – being n a good mood – I even chatted with some people around me: totally out of character. Very much looking forward to my next ‘score desk’ operas: DON CARLO and TRAVIATA (who needs to look at a clock and a sofa?), and then all the RING operas in the Spring. It’s the place to be!

Metropolitan Opera House December 29, 2012 Matinee
LES TROYENS Berlioz Part I: La prise de Troie Cassandra...............Deborah Voigt Coroebus................Dwayne Croft Aeneas..................Bryan Hymel Ascanius................Julie Boulianne Priam...................Julien Robbins Hecuba..................Theodora Hanslowe Helenus.................Eduardo Valdes Andromache..............Jacqueline Antaramian Astyanax................Connell C. Rapavy Panthus.................Richard Bernstein Hector's Ghost..........David Crawford Part II: Les Troyens à Carthage Dido....................Elizabeth Bishop Anna....................Karen Cargill Narbal..................Kwangchul Youn Iopas...................Eric Cutler Ascanius................Julie Boulianne Panthus.................Richard Bernstein Aeneas..................Bryan Hymel Mercury.................Kwangchul Youn Hylas...................Paul Appleby Trojan Soldier..........Paul Corona Trojan Soldier..........James Courtney Priam's Ghost...........Julien Robbins Coroebus's Ghost........Dwayne Croft Cassandra's Ghost.......Deborah Voigt Hector's Ghost..........David Crawford
Laocoön.................Alex Springer Royal Hunt Couple.......Julia Burrer, Andrew Robinson Dido's Court Duet.......Christine McMillan, Eric Otto

Conductor: Fabio Luisi

December 29, 2012