Latest news with #IlTrovatore
IOL News
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- IOL News
Il Trovatore: A Night of Opera at Cape Town City Hall
Opera lovers, rejoice! This June, the illustrious Cape Town City Hall will reverberate with the powerful melodies of Giuseppe Verdi's Il Trovatore, performed by Opera UCT alongside the renowned Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO) and the enthralling CPO AfriArts Choir. Set for one unforgettable evening on 26th June, this concert represents a significant cultural event, the first staging of Il Trovatore in Cape Town in two decades, and is not to be missed by either seasoned opera aficionados or those new to the genre. Presented with the generous support of the City of Cape Town and as part of the CPO's Winter Symphonies at the City Hall season, this rare performance promises to deliver a refined and resonant interpretation of Verdi's timeless masterpiece. Under the expert direction of Opera UCT's Jeremy Silver, concert-goers will be treated to a gripping narrative of love, loyalty, and vengeance against the tumultuous backdrop of a civil war in 15th-century Spain. The story unfolds around Leonora, a noblewoman torn between her duties and her heart; Manrico, the mysterious troubadour she loves; and Count di Luna, her powerful and jealous suitor. The plot thickens as Manrico's true lineage is revealed, intertwining the threads of revenge woven by the gypsy Azucena, who seeks justice for a past wrong. This dramatic narrative, combined with soaring arias and stirring ensembles—including the iconic 'Anvil Chorus'—encapsulates Verdi's bold and emotional style. The concert will showcase a blend of exceptional talent, featuring several successful Opera UCT alumni alongside current students, all harmonising with the seasoned musicians of the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra. Silver enthuses, 'It's incredibly exciting to have singers at Opera UCT who can truly do justice to this iconic Verdi score… Bringing Il Trovatore to the Cape Town stage has long been a dream of mine.' Louis Heyneman, CEO of the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra, echoes this sentiment, proudly noting the orchestra's commitment to nurturing young voices while spotlighting the AfriArts Choir, which was formed just two years ago. 'This concert will show the singers in another genre, further broadening the horizon for our talented performers,' he explains. The performance under Silver's baton will strip away the conventions of elaborate staging and costumes, leaving a dynamic musical experience rich in vocal drama and orchestral splendour. It is designed as the perfect introduction for newcomers to opera and an exhilarating revisitation for seasoned fans – a chance to see Verdi's work reinvigorated in a raw yet intimate setting. So, mark your calendars; this extraordinary evening of music and storytelling promises to resonate in the hearts of all who attend. Don't miss your opportunity to experience the passion and grandeur of Il Trovatore—an unmissable moment for South African audiences.
New York Times
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Singer Sues Met Opera Over Firing for Post-Pregnancy Vocal Problems
The Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili was once one of opera's most sought-after stars, renowned for stirring, powerful performances in works like Bizet's 'Carmen' and Verdi's 'Il Trovatore.' But after she began experiencing vocal problems during pregnancy in 2021, her career suffered. The Metropolitan Opera canceled her engagements and Rachvelishvili lost work at other opera companies. Now Rachvelishvili, 40, is suing both the Met and the union representing her, seeking more than $400,000 in compensation for lost work. In a complaint filed in late March, she accused the Met of breaching its contracts with her, and she said that her union, the American Guild of Musical Artists, had failed to properly represent her. Rachvelishvili's lawsuit claimed that the Met had been aware that she had 'suffered complications from her pregnancy and birth affecting her voice and vocal range.' The suit described her as being 'disabled due to her pregnancy' and accused the opera company of discriminating against her. 'I was shocked that I was not given a chance to recover and all of my contracts for the next two years were immediately canceled without pay,' she said in a statement. The Met said it could not comment on pending litigation. Her complaint argues that the Met should compensate her because of a contractual agreement known as 'pay or play,' which requires institutions to pay contracted performers even if they later decide not to engage them. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Guardian
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The week in classical: Il Trovatore; Total Immersion: Symphonic Electronics; Mad Song; Jerusalem Quartet
In we go, through the gaping jaws of hell into an apocalypse of eternal damnation straight out of medieval imagery. Nothing is comfortable in the Royal Opera's staging of Il Trovatore. That front curtain hell-mouth acts as a grim, faintly comic warning: Adele Thomas's 2023 production, back for the first time (revival director Simon Iorio), exposes Verdi's 1853 opera in all its anarchy. Naturalism, doubtful anyway with a plot that includes sinister curses and a mother mistakenly throwing her baby on the fire, is out. Beneath the convention of set-piece choruses and magnificent coloratura arias, transgression holds sway. In Annemarie Woods's designs, the 15th-century Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch provides a touchstone. No surprise to see humans in animal skulls, cavorting and thwacking to that famous, harmonically slithering melody we call the Anvil chorus (Coro di Zingari). Horned goblins pop through trap doors, squirming up and down the stairs, which, fixed within three large frames, fill an otherwise empty stage. Chorus and cast (choreography by Emma Woods) must deliver every detail of the story in sharp focus. On first night, momentum was elusive initially, the conductor Giacomo Sagripanti pausing for applause that might not automatically have come, and with some dropped stitches in ensemble between stage and pit. Once Agnieszka Rehlis appeared, as the vengeful Azucena, the pace quickened, uncertainty receded. The Polish mezzo soprano, fearless in urgency and despair, held histrionics in tight rein (a contrast to Jamie Barton's no-holds-barred Azucena in 2023, equally compelling but different). As Count di Luna, the Russian baritone Aleksei Isaev, sometimes overshadowed in ensembles, shone in his big aria 'Il balen', in which Luna's thwarted love for the noble Leonora shows Verdi at his most compassionate. The American soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen was rich-toned and assured in negotiating the taxing range, vocally and emotionally, of Leonora, in love with the troubadour-rebel of the title, Manrico. The star American tenor Michael Fabiano excels in this Italian repertoire, silky toned and ardent. Manrico's battle cry aria 'Di quella pira', full of high-note risk, had exciting, pulsating energy, in the orchestra, too. His final duet with Azucena was lyrical and intense. This is brave and powerful theatre, easy neither for performers or audience. It leaves you rattled: surely what Verdi wanted. The BBC Symphony Orchestra's latest all-day Total Immersion, called Symphonic Electronics, was an exploration of music using electronics old and new, with a glimpse at an AI future. Since the greatest work featured, Tristan Murail's 'spectral' classic Gondwana (1980), is for large orchestra with no electronics, there's a challenge in summing up the porous boundaries of this extravaganza. A UK premiere by Steven Daverson (b 1985), Figures Outside a Dacha, with Snowfall, and an Abbey in the Background, used live electronics to pay homage to the film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky. Daverson's inspiration was the final shot of Tarkovsky's 1983 film Nostalgia, which shows a man, a dog, a pool, an abbey, then snow starts falling. It would not be true to say this was immediately clear on listening, though the spatial effects of synthesised bells, mournful brass refrains and amplified saxophone, guitar and other instruments created a haunting, slow-moving avalanche of sound. The other premiere, Bab-Khaneh: Gatehouse of Memory, was a BBC commission by the British-Iranian composer Shiva Feshareki (b 1987). Its starting point was the Barbican itself: a sonic survey of the building's acoustics and design. At the same time, her piece required a complete reinvention of the hall's natural sound through the positioning of an orchestra of loudspeakers – her words – to make a 360-degree surround sound system. Positioned behind her turntable deck, she plays the hall as an instrument, 'sculpting my spatial turntable performance' live in the moment. The BBC Symphony Orchestra played mainly sustained, slow notes, which may have tested their patience. Whether you respond to boulders of sound blasting around the hall at high volume, with a lighting design in winking colours, now like glow-worms, now orbs, now searchlights, is a matter of sensory resilience. I was ready to apologise to the friend I persuaded to go – 50 minutes begins to feel epic, in any medium, even Mahler – but they loved the whole thing. It certainly acts as a 'web of memory', as Feshareki intends. Out of the electroacoustic edifices, songs flickered to the fore, evocative shreds of aural balm: from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, Paul McCartney and Wings's My Love, Foreigner's 80s hit Waiting for a Girl Like You and the Iranian song Gole Sangam. Listen out for the broadcast on a future edition of Radio 3's New Music Show. A mono smart speaker may not have the same effect as the entire, multi-channelled Barbican hall, but there's time to re-rig your house in preparation. On a small scale, in overlapping spectral territory, I must mention the newish, six-strong ensemble Mad Song, who gave an enterprising programme at the October Gallery: two premieres – by Thomas Metcalf (b 1996) and Jean-Louis Agobet (b 1968) – and two 20th-century works, by Elliott Carter and Gérard Grisey. Metcalf's Photogenia looks back to a photographic process pioneered by William Henry Fox Talbot in the 1830s: delicate whirrings and tappings fade or grow like Talbot's ghostly silhouettes on light-sensitive paper. To say it left an impression is not intended as clever wordplay: it did. These expert young players deserve to reach a wider audience. The 50th anniversary of the death of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) is in spate, as demonstrated by cycles of his 15 string quartets, at Milton Court and Wigmore Hall, running in near parallel. In the second of the Jersualem Quartet's Wigmore series (they return in June), the group played the fourth, fifth and sixth quartets. The cellist's twice-broken string notwithstanding, these were brilliantly detailed performances, at once acidic and melancholy. Founded in 1993, the ensemble is characterised by a viola player capable, in resonance and volume, of creating a true bridge between the two violins and the cello. Ori Kam plays a modern instrument by the famed American maker Hiroshi Iizuka. Kam has likened its response to putting your foot down on a Maserati. I wouldn't know, but I've never heard anything quite like it. Star ratings (out of five) Il Trovatore ★★★Total Immersion: Symphonic Electronics ★★★Mad Song ★★★★Jerusalem Quartet ★★★★ Il Trovatore is at the Royal Opera House, London, until 19 July
Telegraph
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
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.
The Guardian
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Il Trovatore review – let's face it: these Verdi characters are very dull
The Il Trovatore problem is easily summarised. Brilliant musical craftsmanship, some great singing roles, and an absurd, wild and cruel story – populated with (mostly) dull characters who make the whole drama hard to watch without a certain growing indifference. Still, one takes one's seat at Il Trovatore with an open mind and aware that Verdi, then at the height of his creative energy after the triumph of Rigoletto, was keen to write it. There is not a dull page of music to come. But it is pointless to deny that the opera George Bernard Shaw unfairly dismissed as 'absolutely void of intellectual interest' is a distinctly odd experience. That is certainly true of Adele Thomas's 2023 production, now revived under Simon Iorio. The opera is staged on a wide stairway, within three receding picture frames, and occasionally inside a screen that evokes the grotesques of the Bomarzo gardens near Rome. Inside, soldiers shuffle back and forth in Don Quixote kit while demons out of Maurice Sendak prance on all-fours amid a chorus dressed to resemble the prisoners in Paddington 2. The message seems to be that you do not have to believe too seriously in any of this, but why not give it a try? It sort of works, at least for a while. Later scenes are more perfunctory, though that's in the score, too. And if this production harbours a deeper concept, it is not altogether clear. But Il Trovatore will always stand or fall by the quality of its singers and by the zip of the conducting. Among the principals, Michael Fabiano's Manrico has the robust tenorial presence for such occasions. He looks good too, which is important for a tragic hero. But Fabiano muddied some of the role's most exposed solo moments and he was generally more impressive in expansive lyrical scenes, notably his third act aria. Likewise, Rachel Willis-Sørensen has a rich, ample soprano well suited to the lovely role of Leonora, which she sang with taste and control. She too, though, was more challenged when drama and character kicked in. Agnieszka Rehlis had all the necessary dark chest tones that the pivotal role of Azucena requires, even if the production gave her few chances to dominate the stage. Aleksei Isaev's Count di Luna was rather generalised and seemed to be husbanding his voice, but there is a fine baritonal timbre in there. Riccardo Fassi was an incisive and splendidly athletic Ferrando. In the pit, Giacomo Sagripanti has his moments, especially in lyrical scenes. Elsewhere his handling feels a bit too restrained. More brazen and visceral scenes are evidently less his thing – and Il Trovatore has a lot of them. At the Royal Opera House, London, until 19 July
