The Trojan War actually took place at the Berlioz Festival

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CHRONIC. An event at the Berlioz Festival, the staging of Troyens, over two nights and under two different conductors (ouch!), confirmed its reputation as a cursed opera.

By Olivier Bellamy

L’The long-standing French indifference to Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) is offset by the English love for him. On CD Thomas Beecham, Colin Davis (first integral) and John-Eliot Gardiner have done wonders. Is it because the love of his life was an Irish actress because he took refuge in London after his failure? Faust’s damnationbecause he fainted with fever reading Shakespeare, or simply because his eccentric personality evoked more sympathy across the Channel than in the land of Descartes?

There is nothing lukewarm or measured about the author Fantastic symphony. Closer to Churchill’s ‘Too much is just enough for me’ than to the ‘Nothing too much’ that is supposed to define French art. To wash away the shame of a Prix de Rome, three refused…