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12/14/2014
Giuseppe Verdi: Il trovatore
Misha Dydyk (Manrico), Marina Poplavskaya (Leonora), Sylvie Brunet-Grupposo (Azucena), Scott Hendricks (Il Conte di Luna), Giovanni Furlanetto (Ferrando), Chœurs de la Monnaie, Martino Faggiani (chorus master), Orchestre symphonique de la Monnaie, Marc Minkowski (conductor), Dmitri Tcherniakov (director, set and costume designer), Elena Zaytseva (costume designer), Gleb Filshtinsky (lighting designer), Andy Sommer (director for the screen)
Recorded live at La Monnaie/De Munt, Brussels (June, 2012) – 143’ (opera) + 15’ (bonus)
1 Blu-ray disc Bel Air classiques BAC 408 (Distributed by Naxos of America) – Subtitles in English French, Dutch, German – Booklet in English, French, Dutch
 
This production of Verdi’s much-loved (also much-derided) chestnut will leave a lot of people cold, if not infuriate them. Keep in mind it is a live performance from the National Opera of Brussels, a company that was run by Gerard Mortier from 1981 to 1991. This makes it one of the hard-core loci of regietheater productions. (Please note my avoidance of the term “eurotrash”.)
Dmitri Tcherniakov has given Il Trovatore a modern setting and, while following the action of the libretto and score, has devised a new scenario, explained in titles introducing individual scenes. Azucena has decided to stage an intervention: she has invited four people involved in an interpersonal struggle to talk over what has happened, locking them into a neglected house. Tcherniakov makes use of the fact that in the first three of the opera’s eight scenes, people are recounting events that happened in the past: Ferrando tells how an old gypsy woman was burnt at the stake and her daughter then kidnapped the count’s infant brother. In the second scene Leonora tells how she has fallen in love with a troubador and by mistake declared her love to the count, putting him in a jealous rage. In the third scene, Azucena tells Manrico about the family past. In the fourth scene they re-enact the count’s attempt to kidnap Leonora that is thwarted by Manrico. This is when things really fall apart, The fifth scene opens with the increasingly unhinged count holding the others at gunpoint; he eventually shoots both Ferrando and Manrico.
The secondary roles are dispensed with but their lines are sung by the five singers. The chorus is always off-stage.
Musically it goes along very well. Conducting this mid-nineteenth century work makes for quite a time-leap for Marc Minkowski, heralded for his baroque-era specialty. He has made the transition very successfully, propelling the piece along with the right balance of dramatic weight and litheness.
The singing (always with an emphasis on the drama) is just fine. Sylvie Brunet-Grupposo’s Azucena is very much the central figure with her solid voice and vehement delivery (reminding us, by the way, of the fact that Verdi originally intended to name the opera after the Gypsy). Marina Poplavskaya has the right sort of winsomeness for Leonora while lacking the ultimate creaminess. Scott Hendricks uses his lean baritone fiercely as he portrays the count as a belligerent thug. Giovanni Furlanetto contributes a doom-laden voice and presence as Ferrando.
Misha Didyk arguably does not have the Mediterranean voice for what amounts to one of the central roles in the Italian repertoire, but his voice possesses an exciting degree of squillo and he is very good at conveying Manrico’s tortured plight.
A big plus with the cast is that they come across well on camera, even during the pitiless close-ups. As a video production it is expertly done.
At the curtain calls I was expecting some negative noises for Tcherniakov but he was applauded just as the performers were.
The bonus is a 15-minute interview during which Dmitri Tcherniakov explains his approach (he speaks in Russian with English or French subtitles). While his explanation has a certain logic to it, we are never told why he has chosen this approach - just what is gained? The usual argument behind updating a work’s setting is to make it more relevant to the contemporary audience. He set Boris Godunov (reviewed here) in the near future; this makes a point about repetitive historical cycles in Russian history (pertinent today, needless to say). Modernizing Il trovatore takes a lurid costume melodrama and renders it into something like a lurid film melodrama à la Quentin Tarantino. Is this truly insightful or merely imposing a trendy veneer?
Michael Johnson
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