Il Trovatore
Superstition and prejudice, hatred and fear, passionate and all-consuming love: These are the primal emotions that power Il Trovatore, one of Verdi’s most thrilling works and one of the most popular operas of all time. Based on a sprawling but wildly popular play by Spanish playwright Antonio García Gutiérrez, Verdi’s opera has a famously implausible plot, in which two babies are accidentally swapped in one woman’s quest for revenge—with tragic results. But believability is beside the point. As in the medieval courtly love tradition that Gutiérrez’s play echoes, the opera’s characters are archetypes: Manrico and Leonora, the heroes, are on the good side; Count di Luna, however, is straightforwardly villainous. The only exception is Azucena, one of Verdi’s most compelling characters, who is the victim of traumatic persecution yet herself inflicts horrific violence.
Il Trovatore hews closely to an older way of composing Italian opera that was on the verge of becoming obsolete when it premiered in 1853. Unlike the daring formal experiments of Rigoletto—the opera that preceded it—and the groundbreaking realism of La Traviata—which followed—Il Trovatore sticks to well-worn formulae inherited from the bel canto operas of Verdi’s forebears, Vincenzo Bellini and Gaetano Donizetti. But Verdi delivers these devices with a dramatic intensity unmatched by any other opera in the repertory. From the opening drum rolls to the moment the curtain falls in the last act, Il Trovatore fires on all cylinders. But the opera doesn’t come without monumental challenges. As the world-famous tenor Enrico Caruso remarked, “all it takes for a successful performance of Il Trovatore is the four greatest singers in the world.”
This guide is intended to help students understand why scholars deem Il Trovatore the apotheosis of Italian bel canto opera and how plot can matter less than dramatic truth in sung theater. The guide will also enable students to appreciate elements of David McVicar’s production, which updates the action from late-medieval Spain to the early 19th century, evoking the chaos of the Spanish War of Independence through the grotesque artistic style of Francisco Goya. The information on the following pages is designed to provide context, deepen background knowledge, and enrich the overall experience of attending a final dress rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera.