Music: No More Business as Usual

Paris' Bastille Opera opens with a triumph

No one is going to pretend that the performance of Hector Berlioz's heroic opera Les Troyens (The Trojans), which has just opened the new Opera de la Bastille in Paris, is anything near the composer's gigantic vision. But for the moment that does not matter. What does matter is what the production represented: a triumph for Myung-Whun Chung, the Opera's untested 37-year-old Korean-American music director; a triumph for Pierre Berge, the man who hired Chung; a triumph for Carlos Ott, the unknown Canadian architect; a triumph for French President Francois Mitterrand; and, most important of all, a triumph for opera.

Practically...

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