UK Edition
Review
Il Trovatore, ROH, review: 'a dizzying, dreamlike vision'
Rupert Christiansen is impressed and perplexed by a new take on Verdi’s muddled masterpiece
Many are the directors who have refused the challenge of Verdi’s Il Trovatore, and one can hardly blame them. Its impenetrable plot, with its bizarre back story and unmotivated characters, leaves it a theatrical dead duck that - as the Marx Brothers’ spoof in A Night at the Opera immortally demonstrated - unintentionally bemuses and amuses.
At least David Bösch has had a bash. He makes his Covent Garden debut with a new production that initially promises something a little different – a dreamlike environment, designed by Patrick Bannwart, that makes no attempt either to unravel the tangled narrative of civil war, revenge and confused identity, or to present it in recognizable settings.
Spindly trees bear huge white blossoms; anguished faces, reeling crows and fluttering moths glow and fade on the cartoon video projections. Azucena’s gipsy band becomes a circus troupe, and Manrico the troubadour appears as a leather-jacketed beat poet. Di Luna’s soldiers cling to a tank, but duels are fought with knives. Visions emerge out of smouldering fires.
For a while such imagery works wonders, creating an atmosphere in which the canons of ordinary reality do not apply. There are few indulgences or excesses (a brief selfie joke is pardonable). But about half way through, the heart goes out of it. Resorting to cascades of snowflakes and similar clichés isn’t imagination but desperation, and one eventually realises that Bösch has no more idea what to make of this farrago than the rest of us. As the conception drifts and the poetry palls, the poor old cast is left to stand and deliver.
And never mind their increasingly blank expressions and ham gesticulations, deliver they do. We may live in an iron age of Verdi singing, but the Royal Opera’s canny casting supremo Peter Katona has assembled a team of healthy vocalists that all round is about as good as it currently gets (a second cast, which I have not heard, alternates).
Star of the show was undoubtedly Ekaterina Semenchuk, a fierce and obsessive Azucena, who emerges from her palm-reader’s caravan to wheel a phantom baby round in a pram. Sadly Bösch doesn’t develop her character further, but Semenchuk sang with such expressive power, free from Slavic hootiness, that “Giorni poveri” and “Ai nostri monti” became genuinely moving.
Lianna Haroutounian made a fine Leonora – a few degrees short of the deliquescent sublime in “D’amor sull’ ali rosee”, but admirably sturdy throughout. Francesco Meli scored similarly: his “Ah, si ben mio” was sweetly fluent, and “Di quella pira” had the requisite martial bravado, even if the climax failed to raise the rafters. Zeljko Lucic’s lugubrious Conte di Luna bordered on the disengaged, but his is a genuine Verdi baritone and “Il balen” was delivered with warm legato. Maurizio Murano made much of Ferrando’s scene, and the male chorus was on form.
Gianandrea Noseda conducted with an exemplary balance of cool delicacy and crackling energy. The staging may have floundered, but Noseda remained supremely purposeful, reminding us that whatever the melodramatic muddle of its libretto, Trovatore’s score is classically flawless.
Until 17 July. Tickets: 020 7304 4000, www.roh.org.uk