Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, N.Y.; October 8, 2012—
The Met’s almost three-year-old production of Verdi’s Il trovatore has returned with a fresh, new cast. David McVicar’s updated-to-the-19th-century production keeps the action as clear as possible in this messily plotted opera, and in collaboration with set designer Charles Edwards, the dark period-Goya look and feel of gloom and looming death works well.
One might see Trovatore as the start of verismo—or at least verismo style—with beefy singing, given that spinto sopranos (Milanov, Price), tenors (Tucker, Corelli), and baritones (Warren, Milnes) have made fine impressions in the three leading roles. But another view is that it is/was an outgrowth of the bel canto era: Donizetti died in 1848 and Trovatore debuted in 1853: all of the singers involved had been trained in bel canto, and the opera is filled with coloratura and decorative music. The Met cast and conductor clearly are of the latter persuasion. Daniele Callegari’s conducting is light and swift, emphasizing the score’s rhythmic thrust and energy rather than its brute strength, and the Met Orchestra, superb as it is, keeps up with him to a tee. It’s hard to know if this is always Callegari’s approach or if he has sculpted it around his singers, who do not possess grand sounds.
Carmen Giannattasio is best known for her Donizetti and Rossini heroines; I believe these are her first Leonoras. The sound itself is not alluring but it is interesting, and while she is secure from top to bottom, it is her high notes that truly gleam, and her coloratura that impresses more than her tone color. She lacks the dusky bottom notes one likes in the part, but dazzles elsewhere: it is certainly one way of looking at Leonora’s music, and she acts well and convinces. Gwyn Hughes-Jones, the Manrico, sounds as if he would be more at home in Mozart, but he is tireless, also has ease with high notes (he sings “Di quella pira” in the correct key), and sings with force. But he lacks charisma and he simply sounds wrong for the part.
Franco Vassallo, once some initial hoarseness dissipated, exhibits a ringing baritone that might also be accused of being a half-size too small; in this company he does quite well. Georgian mezzo Mzia Nioradze (who sang in War and Peace at the Met in 2002) filled in at the last moment for an indisposed Dolora Zajick. She’s an old-fashioned mezzo with plenty of oomph and a bottom register not altogether related to the notes above, but she turned in a good enough performance. Seemingly from another world is bass Morris Robinson as Ferrando, with a huge, potent voice and stage presence; has Boris wandered into this opera? A fine singer.
And so, perhaps this is another view of Trovatore, certainly not your parents’ Trovatore, but exciting and vibrant on its own terms.
