Les Troyens - La Prise de Troie at Grand Théâtre de Genève

Blame it on the Fair Helen! If Helen the fair hadn’t followed Paris to Troy, would there ever have been Les Troyens? Berlioz wrote this prodigious epic fresco to match his genius and his ambitions. For ten days, the Geneva opera stage will host both his tragedy and Offenbach’s comic satire on the same theme, La Belle Hélène, bringing us back to the ancient origins of theatre when tragedy would never be performed without its comic counterpart. Berlioz read Vergil’s Æneid as a child and it never left his mind. But The Trojans also owes a great deal to another of Berlioz’s literary gods, William Shakespeare. Musically speaking, the work pays homage to Gluck and to some extent Spontini. Four performances await, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the great Charles Dutoit, a son of the soil who needs no introduction in Geneva.