Les Troyens

This 2009 mounting at Valencia's Palau de les Arts—a co-production with St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre and Warsaw's Wielki Theatre—of Hector Berlioz's 1863 Wagnerian-length grand opera based on Virgil's Aeneid is, unfortunately, the weakest of the versions currently available. The staging of the Trojan War by Carlus Padrissa and the Catalan theater company La Fura dels Baus is spectacularly silly, drawing on the modern concept of a computer virus as a Trojan horse, with the men of Troy—dressed as Tron-like video game avatars—devoured by gigantic worms disgorged from the Greeks' fatal gift. When Aeneas flees fallen Troy for Carthage, Queen Dido's realm appears to be patterned after a huge particle accelerator, and his later departure to found Rome is staged as an exploration into space. The puerility here—with one ballet sequence becoming a literal boxing match—is astonishing, and the musical performance doesn't compensate. Although Valery Gergiev leads the Valencia orchestra and chorus with passion and Daniela Barcellona and Elisabete Matos sing powerfully as Dido and the prophetess Cassandra, Lance Ryan is strained and wobbly as Aeneas. Add to this the fact that the visual imagery is often dark and murky and this rendition doesn't begin to challenge the superb Gardiner Les Troyens from Paris (VL-1/06). Presented in DTS 5.1 and PCM stereo on DVD, and DTS-HD 5.1 and PCM stereo on Blu-ray, extras include a “making-of” featurette. Not recommended. (F. Swietek)