Il Trovatore

In medieval Spain, in a time of civil war, the powerful Count di Luna discovers that he has a rival for the heart of his beloved Leonora—a mysterious troubadour. Passion, however, can wear many masks: The troubadour is Manrico, an enemy officer, and the Luna family guards a horrifying secret—a tale of child abduction, death by fire and vendettas passed from one generation to another. Verdi’s Il trovatore (1853) was his follow-up to the huge public success of Rigoletto, and it doesn’t so much build on that opera’s superheated atmosphere as take it to a new and unprecedented level. The situations and emotions of Il trovatore are extreme, but Verdi leans into them with absolute conviction, in a score pulsing with hummable melodies (such as the famous “Anvil Chorus”), orchestral colour, passionate sorrow and dazzling vocal fireworks (arias such as Azucena’s “Stride la vampa” and Manrico’s “Di quella pira”). The result has been called the definitive melodrama: Verdi at the volcanic height of his artistic maturity. It’s been said that for a successful performance of Il trovatore, all that is required is the four greatest singers in the world, and since its initial triumph, it has gone around the world, one of the most popular, performed (and parodied) of Italian grand operas.