Event details
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|
Title
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O LIGHT OF TROY! BERLIOZ’S LES TROYENS: AN OPERATIC DISCOVERY |
Date
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Sat
30
Sep
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Event
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Day School Autumn |
Time
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10:00am - 4:00pm |
Venue
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Canterbury Campus |
Contact
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artsandculture@canterbury.ac.uk
or Tel: 01227 922994
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Price
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Standard Adult - £39.00
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Saturday 30 September 2017|10am-4pm
Tutor: Michael Chandler | Canterbury campus | £39
This day school will explore what is often considered to be Berlioz’s
(1803-1869) greatest compositional achievement, the opera Les
Troyens (1858). This vast dramatic conception – the first (nearly)
complete performance of which was not given until 1957 at the
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden – has taken over a century to
become accepted for the undoubted masterpiece it is. The plot is a
combination of two stories that appear in Virgil’s Aeneid – with Shakespearean overtones: the siege and fall of Troy, despite Cassandra’s vain pleas (Act I); and the story of Dido and Aeneas at Carthage (Acts II-III), familiar to all Purcell devotees. The opera ends with Dido predicting the ultimate victory of Eternal Rome over Carthage. Berlioz in his memoirs described his depiction of Dido’s last moments as some of the most passionately sad music he had ever written. Come and enjoy one of the pinnacles of 19th century French Romanticism, the grandest of grand operas!
Details and Booking