We will hear Shirley Verrett’s historic assumption of both Cassandre and Didon on the same evening 50 years ago; just Les Troyens à Charthage featuring Christa Ludwig as Didon from several weeks later, plus a Vienna Troyens starring Helga Dernesch and Agnes Baltsa.

Verrett’s feat came at the Met’s first-ever Troyens when she replaced the originally announced Ludwig. Nell Rankin, Ludwig’s cover, sang the dress rehearsal but Verrett was tapped instead for the premiere. I’ve added a recording of the opera’s final three acts from later that fall with Ludwig in excellent form–in my opinion superior to the broadcast from the following spring.

Ludwig repeated her Didon three years later when Vienna mounted its new production with Dernesch as Cassandre. Baltsa first came on board later during that initial run in 1976 and then again in 1979 when today’s in-house recordist captured it.

Both the 1973 Met and 1979 Vienna performances feature some cuts, but they are far more complete than the version Régine Crespin (in both leading female roles) sang in San Francisco in 1966 and which remains available here.

I attended Eliot Gardiner’s extraordinary Chatelet Troyens in 2002. How fortunate that it remains available on DVD.

His new tour featuring Michael Spyres as Enée will stop in Salzburg, Versailles and Berlin before concluding at the BBC Proms on 3 September.

Berlioz: Les Troyens (Verrett)

Cassandre/Didon: Shirley Verrett
Anna: Mignon Dunn
Ascagne: Judith Blegen
Enée: Jon Vickers
Chorèbe: Louis Quilico
Narbal: John Macurdy
Iopas: Kenneth Riegel
Hylas: Leo Goeke
Panthée: Richard T. Gill
Priam: Edmund Karlsrud

Conductor: Rafael Kubelik

Metropolitan Opera
22 October 1973
In-house recording

Berlioz: Les Troyens à Carthage (Ludwig)

Didon: Christa Ludwig
Anna: Mignon Dunn
Ascagne: Judith Blegen
Enée: Jon Vickers
Narbal: John Macurdy
Iopas: Kenneth Riegel
Hylas: Leo Goeke
Panthée: Richard T. Gill

Conductor: Rafael Kubelik

Metropolitan Opera
15 November 1973
In-house recording

Berlioz: Les Troyens (Dernesch/Baltsa)

Cassandre: Helga Dernesch
Didon: Agnes Baltsa
Anna: Marjana Lipovsek
Ascagne: Olivera Miljakovic
Enée: Pentti Perksalo
Chorèbe: Hans Helm
Narbal: Kurt Rydl
Iopas: Horst R. Laubenthal
Panthée: Peter Wimberger
Priam: Alfred Sramek

Conductor: Gerd Albrecht

Wiener Staatsoper
25 September 1979
In-house recording

Each Troyens can be downloaded by clicking on the icon of a cloud with an arrow pointing downward on the audio player above and the resulting mp3 file will appear in your download directory.

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