HGO’s “Trovatore” boasts a strong cast and boldly updated staging
There may be no opera more linked in audiences’ minds to the glory of red-blooded singing than Verdi’s Il Trovatore. But those thrills are a thing of the past, vanished from the scene with the likes of Leontyne Price, right? A lot of longtime, hard-core opera buffs would probably say that.
Houston Grand Opera showed Friday, opening its season at Wortham Theater Center, that it’s still possible to marshal singers who can deliver the power, passion and poetry of Verdi’s love-triangle tunefest.
Michael Spyres—labeled in the program as a baritenor, if you please—was an ardent and stylish Romeo in HGO’s 2022 staging of Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet. Now as Manrico, the troubadour of the opera’s title, he made his mark even before he stepped onstage.
In Manrico’s behind-the-scenes serenade to his beloved Leonora, Spyres not only sent the melody sailing out with its fervor undimmed by the distance, but he sweetened its second stanza with bel canto embellishments.
He soon turned up the voltage. Nearly as soon as Manrico emerged and spotted Leonora with his rival in love, Count di Luna, Spyres let fly with the full-throated, fiery tones that are part and parcel of Trovatore’s electricity. His lusty vocalism welled up again and again through the opera’s confrontations, outcries and calls to arms.
Spyres delivered Manrico’s battle cry, “Di quella pira,” with swaggering assurance, capping it off with a sturdy and long-held—if a bit piercing—high C. Amid the ferocity, Spyres scaled back to give a gentler cast, including further bel canto niceties, to “Ah si, ben mio,” Manrico’s avowal of love for Leonora.
Soprano Ailyn Pérez, returning to HGO after her compelling Madama Butterfly last spring, brought intensity and delicacy of her own to Leonora.
Much of Leonora’s music has an air of melancholy, even in the midst of her love for Manrico, and as Pérez’s voice welled up, darked-hued and expansive, Verdi’s melodies exuded foreboding. She made smaller moments count, too: When Leonore’s recalled once hearing Manrico’s song include a name—“mio nome” my name—she gave the words a shiver of excitement.
Especially in Leonora’s Act 4 aria, “D’amor sull’ ali rosee,” the gossamer delicacy Pérez gave the highest phrases lent Leonora an air of otherworldliness—fittingly enough for a heroine prepared to sacrifice her life.
But long before the story reached that point, Pérez also commanded the vocal agility to fill the joyous climax of Leonora’s Act 1 aria with excitement. And like Spyres, she sometimes enhanced the music’s expression and tenderness through extra vocal ornaments, including arresting flights above the staff.
After playing an ebullient Figaro in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville for HGO in 2018, baritone Lucas Meacham went over to the dark side as the Count di Luna, Leonora and Manrico’s nemesis. But Meacham didn’t make him a mere villain.
Meacham’s voice is round, full and mellow but he can pour out a hefty, emphatic sound when it’s called for. The baritone gave a wallop to the music’s outbursts, from the fiery trio that ends Act 1 to di Luna’s confrontations with Azucena, Manrico’s mother and Leonora.
But Meacham brought his mellowness to the fore at times, especially in di Luna’s famous aria: “Il balen.” Giving the evening his own helping of bel canto, Meacham spun out the melody in soft, graceful phrases, creating an air of tenderness most baritones can’t approach.
Mezzo-soprano Raehann Bryce-Davis lavished a big, deep and earthy voice on the role of Azucena, who is haunted by a crime deep in the past. In the famous aria “Stride la vampa,” Bryce-Davis wasn’t settled in: Though she sang it with vigor, unsteady moments cropped up. But by the ensuing scene with Manrico, in which she relates the tale of her bloody past, Bryce-Davis was evidently warmed up, and she recounted the story with abandon and vividness, ending in tones that boomed with sepulchral depth.
Bass Morris Robinson, as di Luna’s right-hand man, Ferrando, brought Verdi a voice with the impact of great human trombone. As Leonora’s confidante, Ines, soprano Elizabeth Hanje sang more assertively than the typical lady-in-waiting:
Conductor Patrick Summers may have helped the principals craft the cadenzas and ornaments that enhanced the performance. In any case, he brought sweep and fire to Verdi’s score, while also dovetailing the HGO Orchestra with the singers—especially Perez—as they savored Verdi’s lyricism.
Rarely has Trovatore sounded so rich and vital. Meanwhile, Stephen Wadworth’s new production sometimes enhanced that, sometimes detracted.
First, Wadsworth brings the story from 15th-century Spain to the present day, seeing resonances in the background of national strife—as he explains in his director’s note—with the turbulence in modern-day Spain.
He casts the story as a turf war. One on side, his note says, are “a white-collar militia, titled and entitled,” as in di Luna and his henchmen. Set against them are “armed rebels of an oppressed ethnic group,” meaning Manrico, Azucena and company, whom the supertitles refer to as Romani rather than gypsies.
Thus scenic designer Charlie Corcoran has given the Romani, for the opening of Act 2, a snazzy cocktail bar with chandeliers and eight shelves of liquor bottles, and its denizens are dressed in sleek, glittering style. Azucena has a home of her own, and she delivers her narrative seated behind an ormolu desk. The first confrontation between di Luna’s and Manrico’s men takes place on a town square decorated with street art.
Whether or not that really adds makes the story more approachable, it certainly is new and eye-catching. The other key element of Wadsworth’s staging is that, in the apparent effort to make the plot’s convolutions more clear, he has the backstory acted out.
In the first scene, as Ferrando launches into the tale of the gypsy who killed di Luna’s brother when the two were young, supernumeraries flood the scene. Unfortunately, the pantomimed action is so busy and congested that it hardly seems very enlightening.
Later, when Azucena tells about her own part in the fateful day, supers act that out, too. It at least shows a way that Azucena could have thrown the wrong boy into the fire, a twist that has baffled and amused operagoers for generations. But that bit of explanation seems unimportant in the opera’s grand emotional sweep, which HGO’s cast captured so well.
Il Trovatore runs through November 3 at Wortham Theater Center. houstongrandopera.org
2 Responses to “HGO’s “Trovatore” boasts a strong cast and boldly updated staging”
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Posted Oct 21, 2024 at 12:45 pm by Chazdbass
This is a very insightful review of an extraordinary performance. Congratulations to Patrick Summers for assembling, carefully rehearsing, and conducting this production that could rival performances from the Met’s Golden Era with extraordinary strengths in all parts. How fortunate we are to enjoy this glorious event.
Posted Oct 31, 2024 at 1:17 pm by Peter Godwin
I agree with this reviewer’s comments that the staging of the opera was hardly enlightening: I found the Romani scene, the many scenes with Luna’s loitering louts, and Azucena’s twee cabin particularly bad; while I did find the backstory enactments helpful.
I do just wonder, however, how much of the reviewer’s rather pretentious description of the singing would mean anything “to audience’s minds” – except to a tiny minority. Certainly, the audience I sat among enjoyed the music and the singing, and by and large had a good time engrossed in the drama of ‘opera’ (though somewhat troubled by the staging); though there were a few more vacant seats around us after the interval!