Word: berlioz
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...some years and turned his efforts to penning a slew of histories and comedies. By no means would I wish to do without the play; it contains plenty of things to cherish, in addition to serving as the material for three masterpieces far greater than the play itself: Berlioz's "dramatic symphony," Prokofiev's banst and Bernstein's West Side Story, which remains to this day the high point in the history of the American musical...
...Price. Small wonder. Berlioz was a genius of unbridled imagination who sought the impossible routinely and was willing to pay the price-neglect-to achieve it. Consider the bill of particulars for Les Troyens, based on Vergil's account of the wanderings of Aeneas before the founding of Rome...
...composer's lifetime-he died in 1869-Les Troyens was impossible to stage. The music seemed to be an occasional interval in the vast silence of the scene changes. Berlioz even tried breaking the work into two parts-"The Capture of Troy" and "The Trojans at Carthage"-but could get only an inadequate staging of the second half. The Metropolitan's $45.7 million dollar plant-which houses four enormous stages on two levels, a 57-foot turntable, and the most intricate theatrical lighting system in the country-can accommodate the composer's billowing visions, but only...
...colossal scale is reinforced by eliminating the frame provided by the famous gold curtain. The audience sees the vast set as it enters-just as it would in Hair. Musically, the opera is a series of epic climaxes; there is, for instance, no overture. Except to the most committed Berlioz aficionado, part one is a stark musical landscape with none of the lyricism that is to follow. To compensate-and in effect illustrate the fall of Troy-Wexler and Director Nathaniel Merrill have conjured up six full scene changes spinning around on the turntable. Complete with a dazzling procession...
...courage in taking almost all of Berlioz's bizarre imaginings literally, instead of opting for a neo-Bayreuth impressionism, is to be applauded. Still, certain directions are changed. The Royal Hunt scene calls for an allegorical pantomime ballet. That is now depicted on film. "The alternative," says Merrill, "is to have a lot of little ballet girls running around with flaming branches. They did that in the 19th century, you know. That is why so many opera houses burned down...