'Trojans' encamping on Mass. Ave.

BSO to bring epic opera by Berlioz to life

James Levine has long championed Berlioz's epic score, and he conducted it at the Metropolitan Opera in 2003 (above). (Marty sohl/metropolitan opera/file)

Beginning Tuesday, the Boston Symphony Orchestra will devote the remainder of its Symphony Hall season to concert performances of Berlioz's monumental opera "Les Troyens." The BSO has a rich Berlioz tradition and has played portions of this score in the past, but these will be its first complete performances of what is generally considered to be the composer's greatest work, the culmination of his life's accomplishments in the form of an epic five-act opera based on Virgil's "Aeneid.

The work's size and dramatic scope make it among the grandest of grand operas, one that was for many years caricatured as overstuffed and unwieldy both musically and theatrically. Before writing a single note, Berlioz predicted he would encounter deep problems as he introduced a work of this scale and complexity to the Parisian public, and he was all too prophetic. In the end, he never heard his masterpiece performed in its entirety. For nearly a century after his death, the opera lay neglected, like some mythical giant hibernating on the outskirts of the repertory. On the rare occasions when "Les Troyens" did appear, it was typically with major cuts to the score.

The watershed moment came in Rafael Kubelik's celebrated 1957 performance of the nearly complete score at Covent Garden, which finally demonstrated the work's power and integrity as a unified whole. From there the opera's fortunes have made a steady recovery. It is now in the repertory of most major houses - in 1972 Sarah Caldwell conducted the first complete American staging at her Opera Company of Boston - and it has received two different productions at the Met.

The seeds of Berlioz's opera were planted extremely early, when he read Virgil with his father as a young boy and was consumed with emotion at the death of Dido. For the remainder of his life, both Virgil and Shakespeare served as members of his own private transhistorical fraternity. He quoted and misquoted their work from memory; he declared his undying love for their characters. If you dip into the composer's charming memoirs or the indispensable two-volume biography by David Cairns, you immediately sense that these authors and their creations inhabited his inner life with extraordinary intensity.

Given all the psychic capital Berlioz had invested in Virgil, together with his grimly realistic assessment of what the Parisian public and its operatic establishment could handle, Berlioz resisted the idea of actually writing his Virgilian opera for an untold number of years. In 1856, after the forceful urging of Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein, he finally let loose his imagination on the project that had been haunting him. Once the floodgates were open, he worked with astonishing speed and focus. Little else mattered. He stood up friends and slacked off in his correspondence. He compared himself to a bulldog that would not let go of what it had clenched within its jaws, even if the rest of its body were cut to pieces.

His first task was to distill Virgil's 12-book epic into his own libretto, focused on the fall of Troy and on the Trojans at Carthage. He then completed the music in 1858, with the entire project taking less than two years. Then, as he predicted, he failed to secure a full production and was forced to allow the work's division into two parts. During his lifetime, he heard only Part II performed in a cut version.

The score itself is a kaleidoscopic tour of Berlioz's creative cosmos, incorporating just about every style of music he wrote across his career. There are sweeping panoramic views of the action, moving portraits of its principal characters, and instrumental writing of deep pathos. For all its expressive ardor and grand scale - the finale of Act I, marking the arrival of the Trojan Horse, calls for three off-stage orchestras - the work is also indebted to the graceful and elegant tradition of 18th-century French classical opera. Along with Virgil and Shakespeare, Berlioz worshiped Gluck, and was convinced that if this composer could come back to life, he would recognize Berlioz as his musical son.

The upcoming BSO performances will spread the complete opera across two subscription weeks, with Part I ("The Capture of Troy") performed on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Part II ("The Trojans at Carthage") will be presented April 30 and May 2. But the most committed Berlioz fans will surely want to experience the opera as it was originally intended, in one single span. The BSO will offer that opportunity just once, on May 4, performing both Parts I and II (some four hours of music), separated by a break for dinner. Those who miss the Symphony Hall performances entirely will have one more shot, as the opera - with a different cast - opens the Tanglewood season on July 5.

The Symphony Hall cast features Marcello Giordani as Aeneas, Yvonne Naef as Cassandra, and Anne Sofie von Otter as Dido. Naturally, James Levine will be on the podium, leading the orchestra - its ranks expanded by 27 extra players - and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. Levine has long championed Berlioz's epic score, since his earliest festival performance of it in the late 1970s, to more recently, a new production at the Metropolitan Opera in 2003.

In a statement e-mailed from Symphony Hall, Levine was brimming with excitement. "I hope it will be as fantastic an experience for the audience as it is for those of us rehearsing and performing it."