If only they all sang from the same sheet
The Times. April 23, 2002
by Rodney Milnes
THIS is very nearly a totally successful staging of one of the most difficult of all operas to bring off. The director Elijah Moshinsky takes a serious approach, always a risk in a piece so mercilessly mocked by the Marx Brothers. It works. The action is updated to the period of the Risorgimento, with visual references to Visconti¦s films Senso and The Leopard.
Since the staging is shared with the Teatro Real, Madrid, there¦s a bit of money about. Dante Ferretti¦s sets are pretty splendiferous: three huge cannons mounted on a railway line in the first scene, a long terrace protected by sandbags in the second, a massive iron foundry for the Anvil Chorus, and what looks like Covent Garden¦s Floral Hall before it was restored for the nunnery. Then the money noticeably starts to run out and ˜ mercifully ˜ the pauses between scenes are shorter. Il Trovatore is one of those operas that needs to hurtle on uninterrupted.
But, as lit by Howard Harrison and with beautiful period costumes by Anne Tilby, it all looks spectacular. Moshinsky¦s gently naturalistic direction works well, with a fencing ritual in the Solders¦ Chorus cleverly matching the diminuendo at the end and, perhaps more controversially, an implied gang-rape of Azucena to follow. Given recent revelations about Toscanini¦s and Verdi¦s sexual practices, an extra putting his head up her skirt might be taking authenticity too far.
Musically it¦s a strong performance as well, despite
too many cuts.
Carlo Rizzi finds an ideal balance between breathing with the
music (and so helping his singers) and driving on those
relentless rhythms when need be.
The orchestra plays with great spirit, and the chorus is on
outstanding form.
So why the "very nearly" qualification? Caruso said you
needed only the four greatest singers in the world, and it would
be hard to find a better quartet today. The trouble is, they all
seem to be taking part in different performances. The best is
Dmitry Hvorostovsky as Luna. As well as singing with nut-brown
tone and the most expressive legato line in the business, he also
creates a character, a decent man taking to the bottle and
forgetting to shave.
By comparison Veronica¦O¦ Villaroel¦s
Leonora is an operatic prima donna, but she¦s a good one,
floating some nice soft phrases at the top, and finding enough
weight at the bottom for the Miserere.
The Swiss mezzo Yvonne Naef, making her house debut, sings
Azucena extremely well: her voice is full and firm. But why is
she given glamour make-up that makes her look like Ruby Wax, and
indeed more like Manrico¦s daughter than his
foster-mother? A deranged old gypsy she was not.
As for Jos¦E¦e Cura as Manrico, it¦s the
same story as his Otello last season. He is prodigiously gifted,
with a fabulous voice and a good stage presence. He just seems
unable to make the leap from being a good tenor to a great one.
There¦s a lack of musical imagination in his phrasing, odd
from a man who¦s also a conductor and composer. And as a
performer he¦s off somewhere on his own, wandering about
the stage like a somnambulist, and he portrays Manrico as a bit
of cigarillo-puffing rough trade that not even the most
rebellious court lady would take up with. Only in the last scene
did he start joining in the performance, and produce his best
singing, but it was a bit late.