Performer: Elke Neidhardt

First presented in Perth in 2002, West Australian Opera’s Il trovatore (a co-production with Opera Queensland and State Opera of South Australia) is dedicated to the memory of director Elke Neidhardt, and here the stage becomes hers.

Simultaneously one of the most loved and most mocked operas in the canon, Il trovatore has some of Verdi’s catchiest melodies set to one of his silliest plots. Against the backdrop of a 15th-century Spanish war, a cast of nobles, gypsies, nuns and soldiers enact a drama which hinges on that hoariest of dramatic clichés: children swapped at birth.