View: Next message | Previous message Next in topic | Previous in topic Next by same author | Previous by same author Previous page (April 1999, week 3) | Back to main OPERA-L page Join or leave OPERA-L Reply | Post a new message Search Options: Ê Chronologically | Most recent first Proportional font | Non-proportional font ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 13:00:44 -0400 Reply-To: "H.E.Elsom" Sender: Discussion of opera and related issues From: "H.E.Elsom" Subject: Trovatore, Hummingbird Centre, Toronto, 14Apr99 Ferrando Mark Doss Leonora Eva Urbanova Inez Liesel Fedkenheuer di Luna Evgenij Dmitriev Manrico Richard Margison Azucena Irina Mishura Ruiz David Pomeroy Conductor Richard Buckley Director Nicholas Muni Canadian Opera Company chorus and orchestra Il trovatore really doesn't have a chance. Gilbert and Sullivan sent it up rotten (in Pinafore, Ruddigore and elsewhere)and you can't hear the anvil chorus without thinking of Harpo Marx frigging in the rigging. Even if you've never met either of the above, Verdi's bel canto melodies just don't evoke passion and anger any more as they are meant to. The major key twiddles simply sound like singers doing stuff. Trovatore of course comes at almost exactly the same time as Tristan and covers a lot of the same literary and emotional ground -- mediaeval heroic love poetry in a semi-exotic world that is a dark, magical version of the audience's own. But Verdi produces a stirring work using familiar means, whereas Wagner remakes the musical and theatric conventions nearly from scratch. Not quite -- Trovatore is also heavy on narrative recapitulations to enact the unending cycle of violence (rather than the eternal presence of love in Tristan), poison and cataclysmic mix-ups play a structural role in both, and Leonore also has s Liebestod. But Trovatore has a Spanish setting, and a regression of revenge and witchcraft which makes it similar to a Jacobean tragedy like Macbeth (also impossible for a modern audience in Verdi's version because of its bel canto warbling witches). Nicholas Muni's dark and abstract production, which has gone down like a rat sandwich in Toronto, would on the whole be fine for a Jacobean tragedy, and it comes close to rescuing Trovatore from its embarassing associations with naff gypsy costumes. Muni can't do anything about the bel canto, but that is less incongruous when you can take the rest of the opera seriously. The single set is dark, mainly black and red, with windows on each side. In the first part, there are giant fragments of statues and masonry, a horse's and a human head, lying on the stage. The human head faces the audience in the second part, and the horse's head is revealed upright at one point. The action takes place using only chairs in pools of light in the stage, often with the chorus and other singers sitting or standing the dark around. The prison cell at the end moves forward, and is surrounded by the chorus. The costumes seem vaguely seventeenth century, nothing specific but all dark, except for Leonore's glorious Virgin-Mary blue dress. A fire in a tripod, on the site of Azucena's mother's death, flares up dramatically at critical moments. The direction also seems like nothing much, except that the singers seem able simply to get on and deliver the story and music in an appropriate context. And in general they do it extremely well. Richard Margison was announced as having a cold, and didn't seem as smooth as usual, though he was forceful and, alas, relentless as ever. Eva Urbanova was slightly abrasive but powerful and often moving as Leonora, Evgenij Dmimtriev was suitably nasty as di Luna, and Mark Doss was a striking and fluid Ferrando. Irina Mishura ran away with the performance as Azucena -- it would have been worth seeing just for her furious old bat, damaged beyond rescue by injustice and letting out elemental rage. By the way, Trovatore, act one especially, has a lot more to do with Apuleius' Golden ass than anything Robertson Davies or Randolph Peters delivered the night before. Apologies for the holes in my report on The golden ass. Judith Forst, for anyone who doesn't know her, dominated the singing completely. Fill the other hiatuses with wurdle or splod if it's not obvious what should be there. Regards, Helen ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back to: Top of message | Previous page | Main OPERA-L page ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Powered by LISTSERV(R)] Back to the [CataList - online list search] LISTSERV home page at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU.