Il Trovatore from the ROH

Conductor: Richard Farnes
Director: David Bösch

Leonora: Lianna Haroutounian
Manrico, the troubadour: Gregory Kunde
Azucena, his gypsy mother: Anita Rachvelishvili
Count di Luna: Vitaliy Bilyy
Ferrando, his lieutenant:  Alexander Tsymbalyuk

This performance of Verdi's Il Trovatore from the Royal Opera House in London played in my local movie theater.  We were told that when this opera first played in America, it was called The Gypsy's Revenge.

This is my eighth viewing of this opera and my sixth production since I began blogging. Two were Sondra Radvanovsky, two were Anna Netrebko, one was Barbara Frittoli and one was Anja Harteros.  This is what an opera should be.  Here the production focuses on explaining the action.

This is one in a small set of operas I am calling the caravan series:  Il Turco in Italia from Los Angeles, Le Comte Ory from Zurich, Die Meistersinger from Munich and this performance all used a caravan at some point in the action.  In this performance Azucena lives here with her collection of baby dolls.

In this production all of the scenes are staged in the open air instead of the usual giant buildings with no particular identity or purpose.  The count and his army are at war with the gypsies.  He is in love with Leonora who is in love with the troubadour who sings to her from a distance.  If we are in large buildings, we cannot help wondering how a character from one group might casually approach a character from the other group.  If we are in the open air, this is not a problem.

Of this cast Anita Rachvelishvili was the most outstanding.  Her Azucena was intense and a bit mad.  Haroutounian sings beautifully but is not the big voiced singer we find with Radvanovsky, Netrebko or Harteros.  I enjoyed Kunde's singing but find him a bit too old to be Anita's son.