Il trovatore, Royal Opera: an awkward fusion of passion and frivolity
When Adele Thomas's new production of Verdi's great warhorse opera Il Trovatore was first seen at Covent Garden in 2023, it had a decidedly mixed reception: my colleague John Allison dismissed it as 'too silly'. That staging was plagued by casting problems, and it seemed fair to give the show a second chance. There are now two runs of performances – the second is in July – with separate casts; it is revived by Simon Iorio (while Thomas is taking over as joint-CEO of Welsh National Opera) and the result is certainly thought-provoking, if still only partly successful.
Verdi's melodramatic tale, on a libretto by Salvatore Cammarano, tells the grisly and convoluted story of Azucena who claims that in a moment of madness she confined her own baby to her mother's funeral pyre; meanwhile her surviving son Manrico is locked in conflict with the Count di Luna for the love of Leonora. All this and much more takes place in an imagined 15 th century; hence this production design's intermittent references to Bosch, though there is nothing to evoke the troubadour world of the opera's title, and the visual style is minimal, with occasional descending clouds.
Instead, in Annemarie Woods's designs, a blank stage framed by receding proscenium arches is completely filled with steps leading up to nowhere. They must be a nightmare for the singers to navigate, and though they make everything commendably visible to us, they do not create any sense of atmosphere, especially in the empty final act. That is left to a few continually writhing horned demon dancers, of whom a little goes a long way, and the impeccably well-drilled chorus, who are called upon to impersonate Pythonesque knights and jokey onlookers.
It is the blazing choruses that make the strongest impression here, their strident clamour and expressive shading admirably controlled by idiomatic conductor Giacomo Sagripanti. The standout soloist is Michael Fabiano's tenor Manrico, who injects a real ringing passion, admirably flexible, into his big moments. Rachel Willis-Sørensen's tormented Leonora has some brilliant top notes, but the rest is not so well focussed. Aleksei Isaev is a rather lumbering Count di Luna, strongly voiced but without much chemistry. This leaves the Azucena of Agnieszka Rehlis at the centre of proceedings, a real challenge as it is tricky for her alto to cut through the textures, but she has some of Verdi's finest orchestral sounds, repeated minimalist jabbing as she tells her story, and fluttering strings in her final-act duet with Manrico; Rehlis delivers with inner strength and vocal warmth, achieving revenge in the final tumultuous scene.
In the end the problem here is a basic one of consistency of tone: palpable emotion in the big arias in traditional mode is too often allowed to degenerate into awkward humour and send-up hilarity. Just because Verdi writes an insistent rum-ti-tum accompaniment, you really cannot assume it is meant to be funny, a category error into which this production rather too often falls.
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