Troyens ballet

Ballet music from Act IV:

    Dance of the Egyptian Girls

    Dance of the Slaves

    Dance of the Nubian Girls

Although the last three of the five acts of Les Troyens (the only part of opera the composer was to hear) were first performed at the Théâtre Lyrique, the opera was always intended for the Opéra de Paris, which august institution demanded that every opera put on there must include ballet. Far from dismissing this as a tiresome convention, Berlioz took it seriously and exercised much care with the dances he wrote for the fourth act, doing his best to make them, as he thought, authentic and going so far in the Dance of the Numidian Girls as to introduce exotic instrumental and (in the opera version) vocal effects.

Presented not long after The Royal Hunt and Storm, the three dances are part of the celebration of the victory of Dido’s Carthage, with help from Aeneas’s Trojans, over the hostile Numidians. The violin melody with a downward chromatic sigh at an early stage in the Dance of the Egyptian Girls is amply contrasted with livelier material on woodwind and, later, brass. There is a similar contrast in the Dance of the Slaves, although in this case the livelier material comes first and alternates with a seductive swinging melody on bassoons and lower strings. Both themes are developed and played off against each other on a climax towards the end. The Dance of the Nubian Girls is short but fascinating study in exotic    percussion and woodwind colouring. Among he instruments Berlioz specifies in the score are tambourine, tarbuka (a drum tapped with the hand) and antique cymbals.