Il Trovatore:  An Audience Experience

By Hong-My Basrai

Four gray columns in the center stage suggest a courtyard.  High above the emptiness and silence, a soft light glows inside an arched window.   The first sound rumbles through (Brian Farrell, piano), the felt hammers straddling the low octave repetitively, punching the air drum-like.  As Fernando (Sean Hughes, bass) appears in brown habit, the notes soar and swirl, inundating Pomona’s First Christian Church with the first waves of sound.  Again, muteness imposes.  Then Fernando’s sonorous, three-syllable cry, twice uttered, “All'er-ta, all'er-ta!” plunges the audience into the four-act drama of persecution, revenge, and filial loyalty caught in a love triangle.

Sparing Verdi’s Il Trovatore of visual distractions, Repertory Opera Company (ROC) relies instead entirely on its vocalists’ lung power and dramatization skills to enchant its audience.  The sublime music engages us from scene to scene through the acts.   Like the soldiers (ROC chorus) assembling around Fernando, bewitched by the recitative about a witch burned long ago, my husband and I let the music cast a strange spell on our senses.  An alternate reality sets in with each come-and-go movement upstage.  When Leonora (Lindsay Feldmeth, soprano), in celeste blue garb over burgundy gown and accompanied by Ines (Rachel Payne, Mezzo-soprano), claims the air with her soaring timbre, her angelic face holds us spell-bound by the torment of her love for the troubadour.  “…s'io non vivrò per esso, per esso io morirò…—…if lived without my heart I’d rather die….”  I find myself gasping for air at the end of her crystalline aria.

Trailing on beautiful Leonora’s steps, Count di Luna (Raul Matas, baritone), a handsome figure in dark uniform, strides in, serenading his belle in a deep, cavernous tone, his masculine vibe undoubtedly conquering all the female hearts in the audience.  Before he can catch his next breath, in the distance, the singing of Manrico, the troubadour (James Salazar, tenor), echoes, “Deserto sulla terra….”  Running out to meet him in the imaginative shadow of a beguiled moon, Leonora throws herself into the waiting arms of the amorous count instead.  Animated with mutual hatred, the two love rivals pull out their swords and fight, swapping melodies of low and high baying, ignoring Leonora’s strident supplication.  Their blending voices, intoned in a wide vocal range, train our ears to new heights of pleasure.

Between scenes, as ROC’s staff sets up the stage in quick and silent motions, they involuntarily provide us with an educational diversion.  We realize then, however little or simple, change to the setting in opera is necessary to create the illusion of time and space movement, so that the inspired imaginations can take wings. 

The lively gypsy camp replaces the solemn courtyard towered by the gray columns.  Giggling girls, with hair loosely wrapped in red kerchiefs, run about happily amidst old gypsies.  The rhythmic punctuation of hammers on metal in the resuming music hints at the famous Anvil Chorus.  The merry, four-beat tune incites our feet to tap and hands to clap along in an abandoned festivity.  Steadily, the clanking of anvils becomes more urgent and haunting, more like the striking of a clock announcing the evil hours.  Sitting away in a corner, the witch’s daughter, Azucena (LizBeth Lucca, contralto), swaying in a clipped and grave incantation, “Stride la vampa—up leaps the flame,” works up the memory of an infant son cast into the flame of a fire. 

Aria after aria, the vocalists fill the air alternately with hope, love, desperate jealousy, and wickedness to move the story forward role by role until the finale.  In the end, I wish for the return of the Anvil Chorus to hammer away Azucena’s triumphant shriek, like the devil’s laughter, “Sei vendicata, o madre!--Oh Mother!  You’re avenged,” and Count di Luna’s anguished cry, “E vivo ancor!--And I still live,” finally realizing he had murdered his own brother.

Wicked, hauntingly wicked!  Somehow I have the impression that ROC’s Il Trovatore is a perfect gift for the month of October.


Read about Hong-My's book at
http://behindtheredcurtainamemoir.blogspot.com/