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SEEN AND HEARD UK OPERA REVIEW
Conductor: Andrea Licata
Director: Peter Watson
Designer: Tim Hatley
Lighting Designer: Davy Cunningham
Chorus Master: Stephen Harris
Cast:
Leonora: Katia Pellegrino
Manrico: Gwyn Hughes Jones
Azucena: Veronica Simeoni
Count di Luna: David Kempster
Ferrando: David Soar
Inez: Sian Meinir
An old gypsy: George Newton-Fitzgerald
Messenger: Simon Curtis
Ruiz: Philip Lloyd Holtam
Two quotations from George Martin's essay on 'The Essence of Il
trovatore' (in his book Aspects of Verdi, 1989): "most
persons, I suspect, would describe as the opera's prime characteristic its
aggressive or breathless pace"; "For Verdi, Trovatore was never a
singers' opera, as singers and critics often claim, but a drama".
Unfortunately, Peter Watson's revived production, which originated with
Scottish Opera and was first deployed by WNO in 2003, seems almost designed
to militate against drama and pace. The performers consistently make
passionate declarations while looking at, and addressing, the audience (or,
at times, the conductor) rather than the character about who they feel so
passionately; stock, all purpose operatic gesture takes the place of real
acting; admittedly the long retrospective narratives of the first two acts
necessarily create an on-stage 'audience' - but surely some members of that
on-stage audience might sometimes have moved a little? Nor is dramatic pace
and intensity aided by the seeming necessity for lengthy pauses between
scenes, with the curtain down, for the changing of sets (especially when on
more than one occasion the 'new' set seems to allow for little in the way of
staging that could not have been effected just as well with the 'old' set).
All this is a real shame, because musically this was by no means a bad
performance. All the soloists had their strengths, vocally speaking; the
chorus was characteristically excellent; the orchestra responded well to
Andrea Licata's conducting, which generally showed ease and assurance in the
Verdian idiom, even if it too was occasionally lacking in real drive. The
tenor of Gwyn Hughes Jones is more striking for power than subtlety, but
there was much that was convincingly Italianate in his singing and his set
pieces (notably 'Di quella pira', complete with unscored top 'C', were
generally impressive; if he seemed unusually stiff in stage manner, weakest
in those moments in which real dramatic interaction with the other
characters was called for, that was something he shared with virtually all
the cast (which suggests that the blame doesn't wholly reside with the
singers). Katia Pellegrino's Leonora was vocally excellent; she sang with
both delicacy and strength, her top end was often radiant and she had a
lovely smoothness of sound throughout her range. Veronica Simeoni's Azucena
had great forthrightness and (after a slightly difficult start with 'Stride
la vampa') plenty of power; her tone was pleasingly and purposefully varied
so that, vocally, this was a convincing piece of characterisation. Though
suffering from bronchitis, David Kempster made a pretty good fist of the
Count of Luna; he was vocally commanding, and somewhat more plausible,
dramatically speaking, than most of his colleagues, endowing the Count with
a plausible villainy, both troubled and troubling. David Soar was splendid
in 'Di due figli vivea padre beato', holding the attention throughout,
pacing and phrasing the long narrative very effectively.
There were many musical moments to relish from soloists and chorus alike.
The 'Miserere' scene, with its juxtaposition of musical idioms, was well
sung, played and conducted and, for once, the staging cooperated with the
music, found means of embodying its meaning in three dimensions. The chorus
were a joy in the anvil chorus and in 'Squilli e cheggi. But the momentum of
Verdi's music, and with it the headlong melodrama of Il trovatore ,
were too often subverted by an excessively static production.
Glyn Pursglove