And so Aeneas, which is ostensibly a ballet. You could make a case for it as oratorio, however, or even as symphony. The music is vintage Roussel, instantly recognizable as his music, and ranks amongst his best.

Roussel was a modest man, but not a simple or shallow one. Because so much of his work is unpretentious, a work with the scale and ambition of Aeneas — one might safely call it epic — stands out like the beacon of a lighthouse. Aeneas is one of Roussel's most important works, yet also one of the least known. Why is Aeneas so neglected? The following reasons have been suggested:

• The use of a chorus is unusual in a ballet; this places a hurdle in the path of stage performance.
• The music is more intimate and abstract than Roussel's previous ballets, Le festin de l'araignée and Bacchus et Ariane.
• The timing was bad. With fascism at the height of its power in Italy at the time of Aeneas's premiere, music praising the glory of Rome and its armies had difficulty finding an audience, even though the comparisons were not intended by the composer.
• The theme of Aeneas's renunciation of earthly pleasures is simply less "popular" than that of dancing butterflies (Le festin de l'araignée) and wild bacchanals (Bacchus et Ariane). (I can't help think, however, that the patriotic, duty-driven Aeneas is more similar to Albert Roussel's own navy-disciplined life than is the carousing god Bacchus.)

For those who appreciate the subtleties of Roussel's music, Aeneas is a lost treasure—rather like a fabled lost gold mine—waiting for discovery.

All these ordeals he surmounts, and goes on to achieve his glorious destiny. Rome rises from the ground in all her splendor. Aeneas has divested himself of his personality and has become identified with the city he has founded, and with her people.

His ballet music for Bacchus et Ariane (1930) and Aeneas (1935) combines the spare lines and chaste melodic contours suggested by the classical subjects with beautiful instrumentation in which some of the glories of the old impressionist orchestra are revived. [Martin Cooper]

The music [of the Hymne final]... reaches an overwhelming Maestoso climax, which raises this hymn above the limits of a ballet into the monumentality of oratorio. [Harry Halbreich]

It did not prove to be a neglected masterpiece. The choral wrting for the most part was not only uninspired but downright banal and vacantly diatonic. [Donald Mitchell]

The score contains some of Roussel's most noble and deeply moving music. [Basil Deane]

Aeneas is hardly a ballet, rather a sacred drama, acted and sung, which would unfold its full signification in an open air theatre, such as the Roman theatre at Orange. [Robert Bernard]

In the ballet Aeneas, the choral part is quite prominent; perhaps it is for this reason that the work is rarely played. [Hugh MacDonald]