What do you get when you have a woman being burnt on the stake and her daughter tosses a baby – the wrong baby – on the pyre? The correct answer is Giuseppe Verdi’s incredible melodrama Il Trovatore.
The Canadian Opera Company’s production (borrowed from Opéra de Marseille) eschews melodramatic displays but does provide some thrills. There are also a few gaffes but overall the production does credit to Verdi.
The singing kudos goes to South African soprano Elza van den Heever as Leonora. She has a good stage presence and gives us a lovely and tortured heroine. She achieves controlled fragility and vocal splendour. When she sings pianissimo and you are afraid that her voice may crack, it takes wings and slowly soars with indelible beauty. It’s like a white dove slowly opening its wings and rising towards the sky. She can be dramatic as well and gives a well-rounded performance of the first order.
Canadian baritone Russell Braun cuts a dashing figure as the Comte di Luna, the “bad guy” of the opera. In a military uniform with an elegant cape, he looks every inch an officer and a nobleman. His commanding presence and assured movements are aided and abetted by his vocal prowess. He sings with resonance and displays complete control of the role. This is in sharp contrast to his opponent Manrico, the troubadour, but more about him later.
Azucena, the gypsy woman, is a juicy role and in the hands of the right mezzo-soprano, she can almost upstage the soprano. She is the woman who, in horrible confusion, tosses her own baby on the pyre. She is a woman full of passionate hatred. She wants revenge for what was done to her mother and what she did to her chid. All of that must come out in her acting and singing. In the hands of Russian mezzo-soprano Elena Manistina it does. She crouches around the stage like an almost demented woman and she drips venom vocally. She is also capable of tenderness, as displayed in her final scene with Manrico.
Mexican tenor Ramón Vargas is a disappointment as Manrico. He is physically overshadowed by di Luna and his simple black outfit does not help. But the real complaint is about his singing and acting. He appeared lost physically and vocally. At times he was almost overwhelmed by the orchestra and he never managed to soar through those long, arched phrases with which Verdi provides him. He did rise to passion and tenderness in the final scene with Azucena but that was too late.