US TARIFFS UPDATE | August 2025 | No impact expected on your Presto orders | Read full details
Berlioz: Les Troyens
Bryan Hymel (Énée), Eva-Maria Westbroek (Didon), Anna Caterina Antonacci (Cassandre), Fabio Capitanucci (Chorebe), Hanna Hipp (Anna), Brindley Sherratt (Narbal), Ed Lyon (Hylas), Ji-min Park (Iopas)
Royal Opera House, Sir Antonio Pappano, Sir David McVicar
Awards:
-
Presto Recording of the Week, 7th October 2013
-
BBC Music Magazine, January 2014, DVD Choice
-
Gramophone Awards, 2014, Finalist - Opera
It's powerful in all senses, not least Antonio Pappano's conducting, which is dramatically hard-driven but not without atmosphere, making the love music luminously sensuous...The huge cast is...
Berlioz: Les Troyens
Bryan Hymel (Énée), Eva-Maria Westbroek (Didon), Anna Caterina Antonacci (Cassandre), Fabio Capitanucci (Chorebe), Hanna Hipp (Anna), Brindley Sherratt (Narbal), Ed Lyon (Hylas), Ji-min Park (Iopas)
Royal Opera House, Sir Antonio Pappano, Sir David McVicar
Purchase product
Other available formats
Awards:
-
Presto Recording of the Week, 7th October 2013
-
BBC Music Magazine, January 2014, DVD Choice
-
Gramophone Awards, 2014, Finalist - Opera
It's powerful in all senses, not least Antonio Pappano's conducting, which is dramatically hard-driven but not without atmosphere, making the love music luminously sensuous...The huge cast is...
About
Running time: 275 minutes
Subtitles EN/FR/DE/ES/JP/KR
Sound format: 2.0LPCM + 5.1(5.0) DTS
Les Troyens is a tour de force that ranges from fiery military marches to intense choruses, passionate soliloquies and the lyrical love duets of Dido and Aeneas. For Hector Berlioz, librettist and composer, the opera became the work of decades and the passion of a lifetime, the culmination of his literary love affair with Virgil's Aeneid and with two tragic heroines, Cassandra and Dido. David McVicar's staging is on an enormous scale, assembling one of the largest casts ever seen at Covent Garden. The sweeping theme of the rise and fall of empires runs throughout Les Troyens, along with moving meditations on love and honour.
Contents and tracklist
- Recorded live at the Royal Opera House, June 2012
- Bryan Hymel (Énée), Eva-Maria Westbroek (Didon), Anna Caterina Antonacci (Cassandre), Fabio Capitanucci (Chorebe), Hanna Hipp (Anna), Brindley Sherratt (Narbal), Ashley Holland (Panthée), Pamela Helen Stephen (Hécube), Ed Lyon (Hylas), Ji-min Park (Iopas), Ji Hyun Kim (Hélénus), Robert Lloyd (Priam), Jenna Sloan (Polyxéne), Barbara Senator (Ascagne), Sophia McGregor (Andromaque), Lucas Jaconi (Captain), Adrian Clarke, Jeremy White (Soldiers)
- Royal Opera House Covent Garden
- Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor) & Sir David McVicar (director)
Spotlight on this release
-
An error occurred.
Try watching this video on www.youtube.com, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser.
-
An error occurred.
Try watching this video on www.youtube.com, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser.
Antonio Pappano, EvaMaria Westbroek and Tony Hall on Les Troyens -
An error occurred.
Try watching this video on www.youtube.com, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser.
Bryan Hymel discusses the role of Aeneas -
Hector Berlioz
29th Mar 2014
Katherine takes up the 'Presto Recommends' baton this week and selects some favourite recordings of works by Hector Berlioz.
-
Berlioz's Les Troyens from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
7th Oct 2013
Sir David McVicar’s 2012 production packs some serious magic thanks to Es Devlin’s breathtaking sets and fiercely committed performances from Eva-Maria Westbroek, Bryan Hymel and Anna Caterina Antonacci in the three main roles.
Awards and reviews
-
Presto Recording of the Week7th October 2013
-
BBC Music MagazineJanuary 2014DVD Choice
January 2014
It's powerful in all senses, not least Antonio Pappano's conducting, which is dramatically hard-driven but not without atmosphere, making the love music luminously sensuous...The huge cast is uniformly good and sometimes exceptional - especially tenor Bryan Hymel's Aeneas...It's an intelligent, theatrically energetic staging.
January 2014
It is magnificent...McVicar marshals his huge forces with a sure hand and shows an impressive concern for detail...[Antonacci's] every phrase, every gesture, is mesmerising...Westbroek as Dido is so heartbreaking in the final scenes that you forget how dramatically inept they are; and Bryan Hymel is a match for Davis's Jon Vickers
31st October 2013
Es Devlin’s set designs are brilliantly realised and effectively done...[Antonacci] is a magnificent Cassandra, worthy to compare with the best of them...it is [Westbroek's] humanity and vulnerability that impress most...Listening to [Hymel] you are never in any doubt that you are listening to a hero...this release is a triumph.
7th October 2013
Devlin’s sets certainly supply visual impact in spades...Hymel deliver[s] something very different, very special and (dare I say it?) more authentically ‘French’-sounding than Kaufmann might have been...[Antonacci] brings a no-holds-barred physicality to the role...Westbroek makes for a radiant, vulnerable Didon...this was one of the operatic highlights of 2012 and it retains much of its impact in this excellent DVD transfer.
