The plot of
Il Trovatore is notoriously supposed to be complex,
even incomprehensible. Strangely this has not prevented it becoming one of
the most popular and best known of operas even for the general public. I
remember going to an end-of-pier revue as a child soon after the end of the
war in which one sketch depended upon the audience's knowledge of the plot.
As an annoyingly precocious infant I enjoyed it - or pretended to - but what
may seem surprising is that to the best of my recollection so did the rest
of the audience. I very much doubt if that would be the case today, even
amongst otherwise musically educated people, so perhaps the kind of total
re-thinking of the plot which occurs here is justified.
As he explains in a forcefully expressed interview, the director, Dmitri
Tchernikov, refers to the complexity of the plot and the need to help the
audience to understand what is happening. He sets the entire opera in what
looks like a down-at-heel function room, with a table and a few chairs -
only five main characters appear on stage. The lines for the minor
characters are appropriated by the main characters and the chorus do not
appear but sing from the orchestra pit. Tchernikov points out that much of
the opera is based on narratives and memories of the main characters. This
is not uncommon in opera - think of
The Ring. Those characters are
supposed to find themselves - at Azucena's invitation - in a kind of
role-playing situation in which they discover themselves and what really
happened in the past. In the first half the characters work hard at this but
their underlying feelings become more and more apparent. By the start of the
second half the Count has become completely deluded as to what is real and
what is not, and threatens the others with a revolver. At the end all are
dead apart from the Count.
All of this is effective enough in a sensationalist way, although the
paucity of characters and lack of variety in costumes or scenery does mean
that by the end the listener is as keen as the characters to get out of this
claustrophobic environment. Whilst I am sure that that is part of the
director's deliberate focusing on the main characters and the supposed
essentials of their situation, it does make for a bleak evening without the
variety of tone that is found in the original. Tchernikov has certainly
identified one important aspect of the opera but this is at the expense of
all the other aspects. The original is certainly melodramatic but to at
least an equal extent so is this new version.
When they are expected to act and to "emote" to such a degree it may
perhaps be thought unreasonable that the main characters should also be
expected to sing with exceptional skill. Unsurprisingly they do not. All are
adequate but none go much beyond that, and they are certainly not the "four
greatest singers in the world" once thought essential for this opera. Indeed
listening to, rather than viewing, this disc would be a dull affair if it
were not for the exceptional contribution of the orchestra and chorus under
Marc Minkowski. By the end my attention was much more on them than on either
the singers or the by that time extremely melodramatic action.
This is very much an example of director's opera. However whilst it is
laudable that
Il Trovatore should be taken so seriously, I found
the results as presented here considerably less believable, interesting or
moving than the kind of production once in favour, especially with the dull
singers found here, however good they are as actors. More than most discs
this DVD is a case of
caveat emptor.
John Sheppard
