Friday, 23 April 2010

“Les Troyens” by Hector Berlioz: Heroic Opera in an Un-Heroic Age

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It was anomalously the case that British musicians, not French ones, dominated the bicentenary celebrations seven years ago in honor of Louis-Hector Berlioz (1803–1869), even the ones that took place in what ought to have been the undisputed heart of Berlioz country, the city of Paris. True to its history, the French establishment acknowledged its stellar musical son only in a mean-spirited way. The absurd rancor of politically correct persons against a composer more than a century and a half deceased had two foci: A plan by admirers to remove Berlioz’ remains from their private grave and re-inter them in the Panthéon, the shrine for the illustrious dead in Paris; and the announcement by managers of the Théatre de Chatelet that they intended to stage the great work that Berlioz saw as the summation of his creative life but never actually saw in performance in a complete or adequate way – his Virgilian operaLes Troyens.

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The Euro Project’s Knockout Flaw

The European Union (EU) has temporarily solved the crisis involving the euro, the EU’s common currency, by bailing out Greece. Temporarily, because no one believes the problems are over.

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