Trojan From Hendon Poem by gershon hepner

With amorous abandon
he traveled to Croydon,
abandoning Hendon,
to find him a hoyden.
He prayed; to strike paydough,
machined as her deus,
and stuck to his Dido,
impious Aeneas.

Introduced by no panderers,
by DA’s divided,
defying Cassandras
when he was indicted,
there was no rejection,
as by the great Latin,
nor, legal with fiction,
a get misbegotten.

With her, his long sojourn
has been prophylactic;
protected, the Trojan
is always syntactic
though, overly amorous,
his verse doesn’t scan,
for Dido, though glamorous,
says he is her man.

And he, in no hurry
to leave her like Dido
in Carthage or Surrey,
joins her with libido,
discovered in Britain,
not Rome. Till it wanes,
he will not be rotten
like kings of the Danes.

Describing a production of Berlioz’s “Les Troyens” which spanned two nights at Tanglewood, Allan Kozinn writes in the NYT, July 8,2008:

Mr. Levine’s generally well-matched cast offered a few pleasant surprises. Cassandra, the doomed prophetess, is often sung by a soprano with a dark, weighty tone that magnifies the role’s portentousness, but Anna Caterina Antonacci’s portrayal benefited instead from a bright, clear timbre and a fine ear for both nuance and vehemence. She conveyed Cassandra’s apocalyptic vision with convincing terror, frustration and resignation. You almost wished that Mr. Levine had also cast her as Dido, as is sometimes done. But that would have meant missing an equally extraordinary performance by Anne Sofie von Otter, who brought a smooth, often creamy timbre to Dido’s music and moved her character inexorably from regal graciousness to amorous abandon and despondent fierceness with a wrenching emotional authority and a consistently ravishing tone. Marcus Haddock’s Aeneas was better than serviceable and less than stellar, but he summoned ample power and fluidity when he most needed it, in his final aria and duet with Dido. Among the nearly 20 smaller roles, Dwayne Croft brought both heft and agility to Chorebus; Christin-Marie Hill sang Anna, Dido’s sister, with a graceful sweetness; and Kristin Sigmundsson’s bass was weighted perfectly for Narbal, Dido’s rightly cautious minister.

© 2008 Gershon Hepner 7/8/08