Verdi- Il Trovatore

Verdi - Rigoletto / Sutherland, Pavarotti, Milnes, LSO, Bonynge This Rigoletto has been around for so long it might be easy to take it for granted or skip it for a newer set. Don't! It features all three principals in superb voice, as well as pacing from Maestro Bonynge that is much heavier on drama than most of us expect from him. Sutherla...	Bellini - Norma / Sutherland · Caballé · Pavarotti · Ramey · WNO · Bonynge Sutherland's Norma offers ravishingly beautiful tone at a pitch where most soprano voices get thin, exquisite grace and agility in the elaborate ornamentation that characterizes bel canto style, and freedom from strain no matter what kind of vocal acrobatics a composer may demand...	Verdi - Rigoletto / Luciano Pavarotti, Ingvar Wixell, Edita Gruberova, Victoria Vergara, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Riccardo Chailly This extraordinarily powerful 1983 production may be the best-sung performance by Luciano Pavarotti on DVD, but when acting values are counted in, Ingvar Wixell manages to outshine the tenor star. Verdi gave the Duke two of Italian opera's most brilliant arias ("Questa o quell...	Donizetti - Lucia di Lammermoor / Sutherland · Pavarotti · Milnes · Ghiaurov · ROH Covent Garden · Bonynge This was Joan Sutherland's second recording of Lucia, made with an all-star cast in prime vocal condition, and it is a must for those who believe that bel canto opera should live up to its descriptive title: "beautiful singing." In the 10 years since her first Lucia recording, sh...	Verdi - Un Ballo in Maschera / Levine, Pavarotti, Nucci, Metropolitan Opera
Puccini - La Rondine / Gheorghiu · Alagna · Matteuzzi · Mula · Rinaldi · Ciofi · Bacelli · LSO · Pappano This is one of the problem operas of Puccini's maturity, something he began writing while under the spell of Lehar's The Merry Widow that never quite came together as a piece of theater. But the score contains some of Puccini's most congenial music and attractive scoring. An aler...	Verdi - Giovanna d'Arco (Joan of Arc)/ Caballé · Domingo · Milnes · LSO · Levine	Verdi - Simon Boccanegra / Freni, Cappuccilli, Carreras, Ghiaurov, van Dam, Foiani, Teatro alla Scala, Abbado	Puccini - La Boheme / Pavarotti, Scotto, Niska, Wixell, Plishka, Levine, Metropolitan Opera	Donizetti - Don Pasquale This 2006 Zurich Opera production of Donizetti's popular Don Pasquale captures not only the opera's high-spirited comedy but also its underlying cruelty. Featuring veteran bass-baritone Ruggerio Raimondi in the title role and a fine supporting cast, this DVD has what no other ver...

There are lots of good "Trovatores." This isn't one of them
This is a woefully misguided and magnificently miscast production of "Il trovatore." Only someone suffering from the lunatic delusion that Verdi's "Il trovatore" is a bel canto opera could love it. "Trovatore" has its faults but even its faults have a shaggy grandeur to them. This performance has been willfully distorted to accommodate the talents of Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne, neither of whom is a singer in any way suited to this blood and guts opera. Pavarotti is only slightly better in the power-driven role of Manrico. The old warhorse does not deserve to be beaten in this manner. Even the Bocelli version--and you cannot imagine how it pains me to say this!--is more true to the intentions of the composer than this set. One star for a performance that is miscast, misconceived, and misconducted--plus a star for the sheer, bitter laughter it engenders.

The middle of Verdi's three most popular operas in a great recording
"Il Trovatore" (The Troubadour) is the middle of the three great Verdi operas from the early 1850s (the first is "Rigoletto" and the third is "La Traviata"). It was a sensation when it opened (people waded through ankle deepwater and mud in the flooded streets near the theater the morning the opera was to open to claim their seat for that evening's performance). It soon swept Europe and the world and remains an audience favorite a century and half later. The music has sometimes been criticized for appealing to the cheap emotions of its audiences, but it remains widely performed and greatly loved. There are many great musical moments in the opera, many of them given to Manrico, as you would expect, but there are also fabulous moments for the chorus including the crowd pleasing "Anvil Chorus" (which is really a song from the gypsy camp, not a bunch of blacksmiths or workers of fire from the infernal pits!). The libretto is taken from a famous play of the time by Antonio Gutierrez and reworked for Verdi by Cammarano (completed by Bardare after Cammarano's death). It is a very convoluted plot, but very dramatic and provides any number of dramatic situations for a wide range of music and combinations of forces. Verdi completed the music quickly since he had a clear idea of where he wanted to go with the opera more than a year before the libretto was completed. For Verdi, the role of Azecuna, Manrico's mother, was the central role. He had thought about calling the opera "The Gypsy" or "The Vendetta". The character of Azecuna is an innovation. She is a leading role and sung by a mezzo-soprano. Verdi did more with this vocal register in later operas. He uses characters in this vocal register as a mix of positive and negative qualities and they are usually quite troubled. So, what is this wonderful opera about? As the opera opens we hear a soldier of Count de Luna keep his guards awake with a tale of a gypsy the Count's father had burned at the stake. She cursed the family as she died. The Count's brother was missing afterwards and a baby's bones were found in the ashes. The Count and Manrico (the troubadour of the title and a soldier for the Count's rival) are rivals for Leonora (a lady-in-waiting for the Princess of Aragon). So, they fight not only for Lenora, but on different sides of the struggle for who will rule. It also turns out that Manrico's mother, Azecuna, is the daughter of the gypsy who was burned at the stake and sought by the Count for revenge. There are duels, battles, captures, treachery and attempted rescues aplenty. In the end, Manrico and his mother are in prison. Leonora loves Manrico and promises the Count she will be his if he lets Manrico go. She takes a slow acting poison to cheat the Count of his prize, and goes to Manrico. He will not accept that she has given herself to the Count and is quite cruel to her until the poison begins acting too quickly. The Count sees their love and is incensed. Leonora dies, the count has Manrico beheaded, and the broken Azecuna who tried to warn the Count to not kill Manrico, now tells him that he has killed his own brother. He understands the horror, and Azecuna, sinking to the ground, tells her mother that she is finally avenged. The Count regrets that he must live. This recording with Pavarotti as Manrico, Sutherland as Leonora, Horne as Azecuna, and Ingvar Wexell as the Count, is quite good. The solos and ensembles are quite effective and the choruses are magnificent. The ballet music was left off so it would fit on two compact discs. Rats. Considering the case holds up to four and the cost of a CD is about fifty cents or less and they charge us more than thirty dollars for this work, you would think they could spring for one more CD and give us everything. Anyway, this was recorded in London in 1976 and came out in 1977 and still sounds great.

Excellent Trovatore
This is an excellent recording of Verdi's masterpiece, Il Trovatore. Sutherland is in very fine form, efforlessly singing this difficuot late bel canto role. Pavarotti is likewise in peak voice, creating a most impassioned hero, with a killer high C to boot. Horne is my favorite Azucena on record - she can really trill, which is not always the case with mezzos singing this role. Wixell is a little less competitive, but has a nice ring to his voice. Bonynge conducts the revised French version of the score, which differs in a few places. The recording originally included the ballet music Verdi wrote for Paris, but this has been deleted to fit the opera on two CD's.

A winner
Sutherland and Pavarotti were borned to see Travotore. The opera has strained many famouns divas and divos with the extremely high notes and coloratura. These, of course, are effortless for the two giants of opera.As for Sutherland adding extremely high notes to Leonora, it makes the opera all that much excited. I love this set.

Miscasting woes
While I am admirers of both Pavarotti (to some degree) and Sutherland, I have to say that they are both miscast in this opera. Pavarotti is a wonderful LYRIC tenor - when he ventures into spinto or dramatic repertory, I find him unconvincing. Manrico is a heavy role, and Pavarotti is reduced to yelling at the end of "Di quella pira." Sutherland, of course, has a wonderful coloratura ability, but only two arias of Leonora's really call for any coloratura at all ("Di tale amor" and "D'amor sull'ali rosee"). The rest of the role finds her out of her league in a primarily spinto part. She changes the whole musical structure of the character by changing what she can't do in terms of power into her strengths, like very high notes that are not in Verdi's score. Bonynge is not his usual dramatic self, Horne and Wixell are only adequate, and the only redeeming feature of this recording is the powerful Ferrando of Nicolai Ghiaurov. Turn to Mehta's magnificent recording on RCA if you want to hear a Trovatore worth listening to.