Love and war; obedience and loyalty; fate and freedom. Berlioz's visionary Les Troyens is opera on an epic scale, and deals with some of mankind's profoundest questions in a work of exceptional power and sensual lyricism.

From the Trojans' dutiful acceptance of the famous wooden horse into their beseiged city through to Enée's flight to Carthage and beyond, the opera presents an awe-inspiring vision of the ancient world, in music both monumental and intimate, glittering and solemn.

Les Troyens shows Berlioz at the height of his dramatic powers, in a work whose scale and ambition approach those of Wagner's Ring cycle.

Valery Gergiev conducts the exceptional performers of his Mariinsky Opera, last heard in the acclaimed production of Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten at Festival 2011, in a spectacular, colourful production by the celebrated Greek-born director Yannis Kokkos.

the Mariinsky Orchestra gleamed with typical warmth and radiance

Timeout, New York

Gergiev's performance was charged with intensity

The New York Times