This Trovatore is exciting, well-sung, interestingly led, faithful to the score, and involving; what it isn’t, is Italianate. No matter how hard the late Giuseppe Sinopoli tries, he can neither change the Anglo-Saxon timbres of his singers nor help their pronunciation. “Perche” comes out “Perkey”, “te” is pronounced “tee”, and so forth. This criticism is not empty–the incorrect diction harms Verdi’s exquisite word-setting.
Leaving that aside, we have the gloriously sung and felt Leonora of the great Julia Varady. The top of her voice may be too hard-edged, but she’s still wonderful, with a smooth legato, albeit never having the caressing quality of, say, a Tebaldi, Callas, Millo, or Price, all of whom, while not necessarily Italian, had the vocal velvet required. Dennis O’Neill’s manly Manrico is impressive as well, but his sound is even less plush than Varady’s and he miscalculates both “Mal reggendo” and, more egregiously, “Ah, si ben mio” by singing them both at full force. Stefania Toczyska’s Azucena is wonderfully sung, even down to the trills in “Stride la vampa”, but after a while her tone becomes too aggressive and tires the ear. Wolfgang Brendel is scrupulous as Count di Luna, but the voice is Wolfram’s, and “Il balen…” doesn’t melt.
But there are thrills here: The end of the first act is exciting, accurately played and sung, and wonderfully nervous, and the fourth-act Leonora/di Luna duet has a forward thrust that’s just right. On the other hand, the second-act finale is so slow it threatens to drop dead at any moment, and the Miserere, while its slow tempo allows Leonora’s grief to be underlined effectively and is suitably dirge-like, occasionally seems to forget what it is. In sum, this is an odd performance, certainly not in the top five despite some really interesting touches.
