I went to hear ‘Il Trovatore’ at the Bristol Hippodrome last week, done by the Welsh National Opera. WNO doesn’t have the 4 best singers in the world that this opera is said to require, but the principals were all well matched once they’d sung themselves in. When I was sold my ticket, the box office warned me that I wouldn’t have a view of the surtitles, which I felt was not necessarily a drawback, given the libretto! (My favourite surtitle moment was at a performance of Ernani<\/I> I went to in Manchester once: ‘Heavens! It’s the King’. Very hard not to snigger).<\/p>\n
\nI realised how much Verdi’s music redeems the plot of the opera when I heard La Juive<\/I> on the radio the following night. The dénument of the two operas is very similar; someone condemns another to die, then is told just as it is too late that the other is a close relative, the information having been witheld until then in order to achieve revenge. Halévy’s libretto handles the psychological side of of this in more depth, but Verdi’s music transcends the limitations of his.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I went to hear ‘Il Trovatore’ at the Bristol Hippodrome last week, done by the Welsh National Opera. WNO doesn’t have the 4 best singers in the world that this opera is said to require, but the principals were all … Continue reading