In his opera Les Troyens, Berlioz demonstrates an astonishing mastery of episode, expression, and impulse. It is a dramatic realisation of a familiar tale, drawn from Berlioz' powerful grasp of the meta-human personalities within, and is coloured by the hand of one of the great innovators of orchestration.

If Berlioz' Romeo et Juliette is an astounding feat of musical incarnation, so too, in very different ways, is his opera Les Troyens. Berlioz in February of 1853 visited Liszt at Weimar, renewing personal and artistic friendship. (Each composer dedicated his Faust to the other.) He discussed an opera on Shakespearean models using the text of Virgil's Aeneid. "For the last three years I have been tormented by the idea of writing a vast opera, of which I should write both words and music... I am resisting the temptation, and trust I shall continue to resist it to the end." Four years later, The Trojans was completed and ready for production.

And what a production it was. Berlioz' memoirs are riddled with contempt for the bureaucrats who demanded cuts, rewrites, and simply risible alterations. In a letter to the Emperor dated 28 March, 1858, Berlioz begged protection from two conductors "who are my enemies".

It was finally produced at the Théâtre-Lyrique in Paris on 4 November, 1863. "The performance was a flawed one, as it could hardly fail to be... it was absurd in some parts and ridiculous in others, " wrote Berlioz. Its enormous length, huge orchestra and corps de ballet, tremendous staging and scenery requirements, and chaos among the producers led to fiasco. After opening night, ten more cuts were made.

Declaring the opera's execution "a contemptible parody", Berlioz hectored at comic length: "Instead of a real waterfall, there was a painted one; the dancing satyrs were represented by little girls of twelve, and the blazing branches which they ought to have waved were forbidden for fear of fire. There were no dishevelled nymphs flying through the forest crying 'Italy!'..." and so on. It ran twenty-one nights.

Writer: Charles Barber