Il Trovatore is perhaps Verdi’s most difficult opera to produce successfully. The music is glorious but the plot, even by the often absurd standards of opera, is convoluted and unbelievable. What makes it even worse, however, is that its most dramatic incident is relegated to the back-story, taking place years before the opera begins.
All the main characters are bound together by this incident in which a gypsy woman was burnt at the stake for allegedly putting a spell on a noble infant. On her funeral pyre the remains of a charred child are found, presumed to be those of the cursed infant who has disappeared.
When the opera begins, the infant’s brother has grown up to become the Count di Luna who is in love with a woman called Leonora and is furious to discover that she is being serenaded by a mysterious troubador (the Trovatore of the title) whom he orders his men to kill. They appear to do so, but his almost lifeless body is found and nursed back to health by Azucena who is the daughter of the gypsy who was burnt at the stake years before. Furthermore, she was responsible for throwing an infant in blind panic on the burning pyre and she’s not sure whether it was her son or the Count’s brother. As I said, the plot is convoluted and unbelievable.
The current ROH Trovatore is a revival of Adele Thomas’s 2023 production, which relied heavily on touches of humour, armies dressed as satanic monsters, and a good deal of devilish cavorting to distract from the defects of the plot. Two years later, Simon Iorio has exaggerated some of these aspects to a dubious extent. Much of the humour now looks out of place when compared with the main tragic themes of love, murder and gypsy witchcraft.
Polish mezzo-soprano Agnieszka Rehlis gives a superb performance as Azucena, singing with great passion, capturing perfectly both the appearance and character of a witch driven mad by her mother’s death. With Manrico the troubador also stunningly played by American tenor Michael Fabiano, the scenes between these two were the highlights of the evening. The other two main parts of the Count di Luna and Leonora, played by Russian baritone Alexei Isayev and American soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen, seemed restrained and lacking passion by comparison.
Italian conductor Giacomo Sagripanti brought out the best from the ROH Orchestra, especially in many of Verdi’s set piece arias, though at times the balance between singers and instrumentalists was not quite right.
Il Trovatore is playing at the Royal Opera House until 22 March.
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