Programs · Episode

VERDI: Il Trovatore

Program: At the Opera
Aired: Saturday, August 31, 2019 @ 6:00 pm
Hosted by Lisa Simeone

The story of this complex drama at times verges on the outlandish, but Verdi's score also serves up an astonishing number of his most familiar melodies, making it one of the most popular of all the composer's operas. We’ll hear it on At the Opera in two recordings from the 1960s. Performers include sopranos Leontyne Price and Antonietta Stella, tenors Carlo Bergonzi and Placido Domingo, and baritones Sherrill Milnes and Ettore Bastianini. Plus, both recordings feature the great Italian mezzo-soprano Fiorenza Cossotto in the key role of Azucena.

FEATURED RECORDINGS:

Tullio Serafin, conductor
Orchestra and Chorus of La Scala
CAST:  Carlo Bergonzi (Manrico); Antonietta Stella (Leonora); Fiorenza Cossotto (Azucena); Ettore Bastianini (Count di Luna)
(DG 4775662)

Zubin Mehta, conductor
New Philharmonia Orchestra, Ambrosian Opera Chorus
CAST: Placido Domingo (Manrico); Leontyne Price (Leonora); Fiorenza Cossotto (Azucena); Sherrill Milnes (Count di Luna)
(RCA 6194)

MORE ABOUT THE OPERA:

Opera fans who also love comedy — or at least fans of "a certain age" — may well know the names of two legendary but very different performers:  Anna Russell and Florence Foster Jenkins.

Russell was a singer and comedian who made a long career, beginning in the 1940s, by poking fun at opera. Her routines featured vocal parody along with satirical "lectures" on operatic conventions.  In discussing the vagaries of opera plots, she became famous for the line, "I'm not making this up, you know!"

Jenkins started getting laughs a couple of decades earlier than Russell — though that wasn't her objective. A self-styled soprano, she was quite serious about her singing, but was so inept that her performances evoked open titters, giggles and guffaws from her devoted audiences. Still, intentional or not, the hilarity both women provoked had similar roots — in the very nature of opera.

For whatever reason — or, more likely, lots of reasons — opera has always been easy fodder for jokes. Even the greatest of operas often seem to teeter on some weird edge between the profound and the preposterous, and Giuseppe Verdi's Il Trovatore is a prime example.

The opera has a raft of over-the-top characters populating a story so complex and unlikely, it could be fairly described either as utterly incomprehensible or absurdly implausible, if not both.  And, speaking of dramatic excess, the whole story turns on a grisly case of infanticide.  That hardly seems like a recipe for success.

Still, when Il Trovatore was premiered in 1853, sandwiched between Verdi's Rigoletto and La Traviata, it was wildly popular right from the start. So what saves it? Why is Trovatore one of the most popular operas of all time?

Well, to be sure, the drama is overflowing with the sort of over-the-top emotions that drive any number of operatic potboilers, and tend to make for great box office.  But the main reason for this opera's enduring popularity can be heard in just about every number in the score: It's the music. Trovatore features one of the most spectacular tenor arias in any opera, a whole series of memorable soprano arias, some truly searing music for the mezzo-soprano and a couple of Verdi's signature, achingly beautiful baritone arias. And that's not to mention the famous "Anvil Chorus."

In the end, all that music has been more than enough to keep the work firmly planted in the world's opera houses for more than 160 years. Yes, the story may be a bit muddled; it's often hard to keep track of just who betrayed whom, who threw which baby into the fire, and exactly how all these confounding characters wound up in the same opera in the first place. But if you don't leave this opera whistling a tune, it's only because there are too many to choose from.

 On At the Opera, host Lisa Simeone presents Il Trovatorein a pair of exciting recordings from the 1960s. First, we’ll hear tenor Carlo Bergonzi as Manrico, baritone Ettore Bastianini as the Count, and soprano Antonietta Stella as Leonora, recorded in 1962.  Then, from 1969, it’s soprano Leontyne Price, baritone Sherrill Milnes, and a 28-year-old tenor named Placido Domingo.  And, there’s another vocal treat.  Both recordings feature the great Italian mezzo-soprano Fiorenza Cossotto in the key role of Azucena.

Playlist