Il Trovatore (Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series)

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Il “The Trovatore Troubadour” Italian opera in four acts Music by Giuseppe Verdi

Libretto by Salvatore Cammarano, after El Trovador (1836), a tragedy by the Spanish playwright, Antonio García Gutiérrez (The final libretto was completed by Emmanuele Bardareafter Cammarano’s premature death.)

Premiere at the Teatro Apollo, Rome, January 1853

Adapted from the Opera Journeys Lecture Series by Burton D. Fisher

Story Synopsis Principal Characters in the Opera Story Narrative with Music Highlights Verdi and Il Trovatore

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Story Synopsis

The Il Trovatore story takes place in Spain during the early 15th century: a civil war rages between the armies of the Duke of Urgel, a pretender to the throne, and King Juan I of Aragon: Manrico is allied with Urgel, and the young Count di Luna with the King; these two enemies in war are also rivals for Leonora, a beautiful lady-inwaiting to the Queen of Aragon. Fifteen years before the opera story begins, an old gypsy was accused of bewitching the elder Count di Luna’s infant son, and thus causing the child’s subsequent deathly illness: afterwards, the gypsy was burned at the stake. Her daughter, Azucena, to avenge her mother’s execution, kidnapped the di Luna infant, intending to cast him into the fires. But in her deranged state of mind, she accidentally cast her own son into the fires. Azucena escaped with the di Luna child, named him Manrico, and raised him as her own son. In Act I, “The Duel,” Manrico, a troubadour, serenades Leonora from the palace garden. His rival, Count di Luna, confronts him. A duel ensues and Manrico triumphs, but spares di Luna’s life. In Act II, “The Gypsy Mother,” Manrico’s surrogate mother, the gypsy Azucena, relates the events of her mother’s horrible execution by the elder di Luna. Manrico, shocked at the cruelty, joins his mother and vows revenge against the di Luna family.

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Leonora believes that Manrico died in battle and escapes to the convent of Castellor to take her vows. Di Luna attempts to kidnap Leonora, but retreats after Manrico and Urgel’s soldiers overwhelm him. In Act III, “The Gypsy Woman’s Son,” di Luna prepares to attack the fortress of Castellor to re-kidnap Leonora. Azucena is captured by di Luna’s army. In panic, she calls for Manrico’s help. Di Luna is delighted that he has captured his enemy’s mother: he vows double vengeance. Inside Castellor, just as Manrico and Leonora are about to be wed, Manrico learns that di Luna captured Azucena and plans to execute her at the stake. Manrico rushes off to rescue his mother. In Act IV, “The Torture,” Manrico and Azucena have been captured and are imprisoned awaiting execution. Leonora offers to sacrifice herself to di Luna to save Manrico: di Luna agrees, but Leonora secretly takes poison. Leonora arrives at the prison to tell Manrico that he is free: di Luna sees Leonora in Manrico’s arms, realizes he has been betrayed, and orders the immediate execution of Manrico and Azucena. Leonora dies from the poison. After Manrico is executed, Azucena reveals to di Luna that he has killed his own brother: she shrieks with joy that at last she has fulfilled her life’s obsession; her mother has been avenged.

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Principal Characters in the Opera Leonora, a Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen of Aragon Soprano Count di Luna, a noble Baritone Manrico, a soldier and troubadour Tenor Azucena, a gypsy Mezzo Soprano Ferrando, a captain of di Luna’s guard Bass Inez, Leonora’s attendant Soprano Ruiz, Manrico’s lieutenant Tenor Soldiers of Urgel and Aragon, gypsies, nuns of Castellor TIME: PLACE:

the year 1409 Spain, the provinces of Biscay and Aragon

Story Narrative with Music Highlights A twice repeated drum roll is followed by a burst of trumpets, a chivalric yet ominous introduction to the forthcoming tragedy. Opening music:

ACT I: “ The Duel” Scene 1 - Midnight at the Palace of Aliaferia in Aragon, Spain The Queen is in residence in the di Luna palace of Aliaferia. The young Count di Luna passes the night before the window of the woman he passionately loves, the Queen’s beautiful lady-in-waiting, Leonora. The Count has become consumed with jealousy and has

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ordered his soldiers to be on guard for a mysterious, unknown rival who serenades Leonora by night. The soldiers huddle around a fire. Ferrando, a captain in di Luna’s guard, narrates the gruesome story that occurred fifteen years ago when the Count’s baby brother, Garzía, disappeared. Garzía’s nurse awoke one morning to find a sinister old gypsy hag in sorcerer’s robes hovering over the baby’s cradle, her bloodshot eyes staring fixedly on the child. The nurse screamed, help arrived, and the gypsy was seized, protesting that she had only come to tell the baby’s fortune. The gypsy was released, but afterwards, the child became deathly ill with a lingering fever. All thought that he would die, believing that his affliction was caused by an “evil-eye” curse laid on the child by the old gypsy. Di Luna’s soldiers pursued the gypsy in the mountains of Biscay, apprehended her, accused her of witchcraft, and then executed her at the stake. In terror, the old gypsy’s daughter vowed to avenge her mother’s brutal death: she kidnapped the di Luna infant, Garzía, from his cradle. After his disappearance, a frantic search ensued, but all that was found was a small half-charred skeleton smoldering on the exact spot where the old gypsy had been burned. The Count di Luna was broken-hearted, but was never fully convinced that his infant son was dead. Soon thereafter, while the Count was on his deathbed, he made his other son, the present Count di Luna, swear that he would be unceasing in his search for his brother. The executed gypsy’s daughter vanished. However, it is believed that she still lives in Biscay and roves the countryside: Ferrando is certain that he would immediately recognize her savage face if he saw her again. After hearing Ferrando’s tale about gypsy sorceresses and the di Luna family misfortunes,

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the soldiers shiver with superstitious dread. The midnight bell sounds, and they all depart and enter the palace for the night.

ACT I - Scene 2: A terrace of the palace. Leonora, a lady-in-waiting to the Queen of Aragon, strolls on the garden terrace with her attendant and confidant, Inez, heedless to Inez’s reminder that the Queen calls her from inside the palace. Leonora has come to this secluded corner of the palace garden hoping to meet her secret lover, Manrico, the troubadour who has been visiting the palace at night and serenades her from the garden. Leonora: Tacea la notte

Leonora confides to Inez that she met Manrico when he was participating in a jousting tournament. He was an unknown knight in black who won every joust, and she had the honor to bestow the victory crown upon him. After the outbreak of the civil war, the mysterious knight vanished. But suddenly he has reappeared, serenading her at night and invoking her name in beautiful song. Inez tries to dissuade Leonora, fearing that her lover is an enemy of Aragon in the civil war; her passion for him can only lead to sorrow and anguish. Nevertheless, Leonora has become captivated and enraptured by the mysterious knight: she affirms her intense love for him and vows that she would gladly die for him.

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Leonora: Di tale amor che dirsi…

After Leonora and Inez enter the palace, the Count di Luna appears in the shadows. As he expresses his obsessive passion for Leonora, he is suddenly interrupted by the sound of a lute: his rival for Leonora has evaded his guards and is presently in the palace garden. The troubadour’s serenade laments his sad destiny: he is lonely on earth, and is doomed to fight in wars. . Manrico’s Serenade: Deserto sulla terra…

When Leonora hears the troubadour’s serenade, she rushes from the palace to greet her lover, but in the darkness, she mistakenly embraces the Count di Luna. The troubadour then appears, raises his knight’s visor and reveals his identity: “I am Manrico,” further announcing that he is an officer in the Urgel’s army. The Count erupts into a frenzy of jealousy and anger, incriminating the troubadour as an outlaw and his enemy in the civil war. Passions reach a furious climax as Manrico and the Count di Luna, now bitter rivals in love and war, duel in mortal combat: Manrico is victorious but spares di Luna’s life; Leonora faints.

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ACT II: “The Gypsy Mother” Several months later. A gypsy camp in the mountains of Biscay. The warfare between Urgel and Aragon continues unabated. Manrico, severely wounded in the recent battle at Pelila, is recovering in the gypsy camp where he is cared for by his mother, Azucena. In medieval times, many gypsies were tinkers by trade: they are seen in their mountain retreat working at their anvils. Chorus: Anvil Chorus

Azucena is a wild and hideous creature, prematurely aged, and seemingly shattered in her wits. Nevertheless, with her son Manrico, she characterizes true motherly love, tenderness, and affection. Azucena stands by a fire on the very spot where her mother was executed: She seems mesmerized by the fire and craves revenge. Azucena: Stride la vampa…

Azucena is obsessed, haunted, and tormented by the memory of her mother’s execution by the old Count di Luna. With Manrico at her side, she relates the grim and horrifying details of that dreadful moment.

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Azucena’s tale begins where Ferrando’s earlier story left off. Her mother was led to the stake by the old Count’s soldiers, and she followed behind while carrying her infant son in her arms. Several times she tried to approach her mother, but was driven off by di Luna’s brutal soldiers. It was then, seething with revenge, that she kidnapped the infant Garzía. She stood before the pyres bearing both infants: her own, and di Luna’s. Her mother was placed on the pyres, barefoot and disheveled, and just before her death, decreed her last words to her daughter: Mi vendica, “Avenge me,” a grieving plea that has remained eternally engraved in Azucena’s soul. Manrico asks Azucena: “And did you avenge her?” Azucena reveals that in her heartbroken and tormented state, she obeyed her mother’s command for revenge, and flung the infant into the flames. But in her delirium, dazed with hate and grief, she made a terrible mistake and threw her own son into the fire. When the horror faded, there, lying beside her, was the Count di Luna’s infant son, Garzía: Azucena murdered her own child! Manrico reacts to her story with shock and horror. However, Azucena’s story bewilders Manrico. If Azucena mistakenly cast her own son into the fire, then who is he? Azucena retracts her story and excuses herself, explaining that she was overcome with a momentary delirium; when she recalled those gruesome events of her mother’s execution, she became confused. Azucena immediately reassures Manrico that she is indeed his mother, and reminds him that after he was reported dead at the battle of Pelila, she hastened there to give him a proper burial, and when she found him severely wounded, she nursed him back to health with maternal devotion, care, and tenderness.

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After Azucena’s dreadful story ends, Manrico, with soldierly pride, proceeds to relate the details of his duel with the Count di Luna. He reveals that he could have dispatched him with ease, but some mysterious instinct held him back, perhaps a voice from heaven preventing him from striking the fatal blow. Manrico: Mal reggendo all’aspro assalto,

However, after Manrico hears his mother’s tale about the horrors the di Lunas have inflicted on her mother, he turns to sympathy and sorrow, and vows revenge on the Count. Azucena exults: Manrico has become her instrument to fulfill her longed for revenge; Manrico will exact justice for her mother’s execution by the old Count di Luna. Ruiz, Manrico’s lieutenant, announces that the Count di Luna is planning to abduct Leonora. Leonora believed that her beloved troubadour had died in the battle of Pelila, and in her futility, decided to enter a convent and take her vows. Di Luna became aware of her intentions and plans to kidnap her from the very threshold of the convent. Manrico decides to gather his troops and rescue Leonora. Azucena becomes fearful and anxious. She tries to dissuade Manrico with tears and protests, appealing to him not to risk his life while he is still weak from his wounds. Nevertheless, Azucena is tormented by her inner conflicts: Manrico has become her instrument for revenge, and she fears that losing him would defeat her life’s passion; at the same time, she loves Manrico as a son, and she fears for his safety.

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Act II - Scene 2: The Cloister of the Convent at Castellor The Count di Luna believes Manrico died in battle, therefore, all obstacles to possessing Leonora have been removed. He plans to abduct Leonora from the convent before she takes her vows. The Count reflects on his passionate love for Leonora. Di Luna: Il balen del suo sorriso…

A chorus of nuns solemnly condemn the vanity of earthly possessions. Leonora, about to take her vows and join the sisterhood, expresses her hope that she may meet her beloved Manrico among the souls in Heaven. Count di Luna and his soldiers arrive to abduct Leonora, and almost immediately thereafter, Manrico appears to challenge him. Suddenly, Manrico’s lieutenant, Ruiz, arrives with soldiers of Urgel, overwhelm di Luna, but all judiciously and respectfully avoid a confrontation in the convent. Leonora abandons her vows and ecstatically falls into Manrico’s arms. Manrico is given command of Castellor as di Luna departs in a maniacal frenzy of frustration, defeated passion, and disgrace: both enemies curse each other and vow to continue their rivalry until death.

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ACT III – Scene 1: “ The Gypsy Woman’s Son” In the fortress of Castellor, Manrico and Leonora prepare to be married. Manrico: Ah sì ben mio coll’essere io tuo,

Count di Luna and his soldiers have surrounded the castle, intending to seize it and capture Manrico and Leonora. In relishing his victory, di Luna exults that he will have at his mercy, Manrico, his enemy and rival, and finally, Leonora, the woman for whom he lusts. Azucena is captured while inadvertently crossing through di Luna’s camp. Ferrando interrogates Azucena, recognizes her, and is fully convinced that she is their long desired criminal, the gypsy’s daughter who kidnapped the di Luna infant. Ferrando swears to di Luna: “It is that wretched woman who committed the horrid deed!” Azucena futilely tries to persuade them that they are mistaken, but she is condemned. Azucena: Giorni poveri vivea,

Azucena is bound, and in desperation, cries out to Manrico for help. The Count becomes exultant when he realizes that he has captured his rival’s mother. Without hesitation, he orders Azucena to be executed on pyres to be built in sight of his besieged enemy at Castellor.

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ACT III - Scene 2: In Castellor, Manrico and Leonora are about to be married, but they are suddenly interrupted by Ruiz, who informs him that his mother has been captured by di Luna’s forces and is about to be burned on the stake. From a castle window, Manrico becomes horrified when he sees the fires being prepared. He summons his troops, postpones his marriage, and informs Leonora that his duty commands him to leave: “I was a son before I became a lover!” In an expanded moment of heroic resolution and filial devotion, Manrico rushes off to rescue his mother. Manrico: Di quella pira…

ACT IV: - The Torture (or The Punishment) Manrico failed in his efforts to save Azucena. Castellor was overrun by di Luna and his forces; Manrico was defeated and captured, but Leonora escaped. Manrico and Azucena are chained and imprisoned in the tower of Aliaferia. Leonora has come to Aliferia to negotiate with di Luna to save Manrico: she will sacrifice her life for Manrico; her ring contains poison. Leonora: D’amor sull’ali rosee…

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From outside the prison, chanting monks pray for mercy for dying souls: the Miserere. The troubadour is heard singing from his tower cell: his last farewell to his beloved Leonora and his desperate yearning for death to relieve his agony. Leonora hears his passionate lament and prays for mercy. Manrico and Leonora: Miserere

The Count is seen relishing his victory at Castellor: nevertheless, he is chagrined that he failed to find Leonora. Suddenly, Leonora appears before him. Leonora pleads with di Luna to spare Manrico’s life: in exchange, she offers herself to him. Di Luna, overjoyed by his longed-for victory, consents: “He shall live!” But Leonora betrays him, and whispers aside: “You shall possess me, but cold and lifeless!” Leonora surreptitiously swallows a slow poison from her ring. Nevertheless, di Luna is ecstatic: he has finally won Leonora and satisfied his passion, albeit without honor.

ACT IV – Scene 2: Inside the tower Manrico soothes his weak, terrified, and distraught mother. She has become crazed in realizing that she is to be burned alive, and again recalls the horror of her mother’s execution. To avoid the reality of their doomed fate, they nostalgically dream about returning to the freedom in the mountains of Biscay.

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Manrico and Azucena: Ai nostri monti..

Suddenly, Leonora arrives at the prison and announces that Manrico is free. Manrico turns to rage when he speculates on the price she paid for his freedom; his honor is offended. However, Leonora reveals her sacrifice, telling him that “Rather than live for another, I chose to die for you”: Manrico’s joy turns to despair. Count di Luna appears at the cell, sees Leonora and Manrico embraced, and bitterly realizes that she betrayed him. Suddenly, Leonora dies from the poison: Manrico is ordered to his execution, and bids a last farewell to his mother. The Count drags Azucena to the tower window and forces her to watch her son’s execution. As the blade falls, Azucena cries out: “He was your brother!” Di Luna shrieks with horrified anguish at the headless body of the man he has just executed: his brother, Garzía di Luna. Fratricide becomes di Luna’s final horror as he shouts in terrified torment: “Yet I am still alive.” Azucena’s obsession for revenge has destroyed the spirit and soul of Count di Luna. Deliriously, she proclaims her victory, the triumph of her irrational passion: “Mother, you are avenged!”

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Verdi…..……………………and Il Trovatore

A

t mid-point in the nineteenth century, the 37 year-old Giuseppe Verdi had become acknowledged as the most popular opera composer in the world: his operas were the opera box office rage, and some concluded that he single handedly had all of Italy - and the world – singing his music. Verdi’s operas were Italian to the core, dutifully preserving the great legacy and traditions of his immediate predecessors, the bel canto giants, Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti: In Verdi’s operas, voice and melody remained the supreme core of the art form. Viewing the opera landscape at mid-century, Rossini had retired almost 20 years earlier, Bellini died in 1835, Donizetti died in 1848, the premiere of Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète took place in 1849, and Wagner’s Lohengrin premiered in 1850. Seemingly, the only active opera composer whose works were capable of mesmerizing audiences was Verdi. Between the years 1839 and 1850, Verdi composed 15 operas. His first opera, Oberto (1839), indicated promise for the young, 26 year-old budding opera composer, but his second opera, the comedy, Un Giorno di Regno (1840), was not only received with indifference, but was a total failure. Verdi’s third opera, Nabucco (1842), became a sensational triumph and catapulted the him to immediate world-wide critical and popular acclaim. He proceeded to follow with one success after another: I Lombardi (1843); Ernani (1844); I Due Foscari (1844); Giovanna d’Arco (1845); Alzira (1845); Attila (1846); Macbeth (1847); I Masnadieri (1847); Il Corsaro (1848); La Battaglia di Legnano (1849); Luisa Miller (1849); and Stiffelio (1850).

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Verdi’s early operas all contained an underlying theme: his patriotic mission for the liberation of his beloved Italy from oppressive foreign rule: particularly, France and Austria. Verdi, with his operatic pen, sounded the alarm for Italy’s freedom: The underlying stories in his early operas were disguised with allegory that advocated individual liberty, freedom, and independence for Italy; the suffering and struggling heroes and heroines in those early operas were metaphorically his beloved Italian compatriots. In Giovanna d’Arco (“Joan of Arc” 1845), the French patriot Joan becomes a martyr after she confronts the oppressive English, the French monarchy, and the Church: the heroine’s plight, synonymous with Italy’s struggle against oppression. In Nabucco (1842), the biblical story of Nebuchadnezzar, the suffering Hebrews, enslaved by the Babylonians, were allegorically the Italian people themselves, similarly in bondage by foreign oppressors. Verdi’s Italian audience easily understood the underlying messages subtly injected between the lines of his text and nobly expressed through his musical language. At Nabucco’s premiere, at the conclusion of the Hebrew slave chorus, Va Pensiero, the audience stopped the performance for 15 minutes with wildly inspired shouts of Viva Italia: an explosion of nationalism that, in order to prevent riots, forced the authorities to assign extra police to later performances of the opera. The Va Pensiero chorus became the emotional and unofficial “Italian National Anthem,” the musical inspiration for Italy’s patriotic aspirations. Even the name V E R D I had a dual meaning: homage to the great maestro expressed as Viva Verdi, and the letters V E R D I denoted Vittorio Emanuelo Re D’ Italia: The return of King Victor Emmanuel was synonymous with Italian liberation and unification.

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As the 1850s unfolded, Verdi’s creative genius had arrived at a turning point in terms of his artistic inspiration, evolution, and maturity. He felt satisfied that his objective for Italian independence was soon to be realized: the Risorgimento of 1861 made Italian nationhood a fait accompli. Verdi now decided to abandon the heroic pathos and nationalistic themes of his early operas. He began to seek more profound operatic subjects: subjects that would be bold to the extreme; subjects with greater dramatic and psychological depth; subjects that accented spiritual values, intimate humanity, and tender emotions. He became ceaseless in his goal to express the human soul on the operatic stage more profoundly that it had ever been realized. The year 1851 inaugurated Verdi’s “middle period,” a defining moment in his career in which his operas started to contain heretofore unknown dramatic qualities, a profound characterization of humanity, and an exceptional lyricism. Verdi’s creative art began to flower into a new maturity with operas that would eventually become some of the best loved works composed for the lyric theater: Rigoletto (1851); Il Trovatore (1853); La Traviata (1853); I Vespri Siciliani (1855); Simon Boccanegra (1857); Aroldo (1857); Un Ballo in Maschera (1859); La Forza del Destino (1862); Don Carlos (1867); and Aïda (1871). As Verdi approached the twilight of his prolific operatic career, he was supposed to be relishing his “golden years.” It was a time when the fires of ambition were supposed to become extinguished, and a time when most people become spectators in the show of life rather than its stars. However, the great opera composer defied the natural order and epitomized the words of Robert Browning’s Rabbi Ben Ezra: “Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be.” Consequently, Verdi overturned the

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equation and transformed his old age into a glory: “The best is yet to be” became his last two operatic masterpieces, Otello (1887), and Falstaff (1893), both composed respectively a the ages of 74 and 80. These operas are unprecedented in their integration between text and music and in their internal, architectural organic integration: they are considered by many to be the greatest Italian music dramas and tour de forces in the entire canon. Verdi eventually composed 28 operas during his illustrious career, dying in 1901 at the age of 88.

I

n 1851, Verdi was approached by the management of La Fenice in Venice to write an opera to celebrate the Carnival and Lent seasons. In seeking a story source for the opera, Verdi turned to the new romanticism of the French dramatist, Victor Hugo, a writer whose Hernani he successfully treated in his opera Ernani seven years earlier in 1844. Victor Hugo’s play, Le Roi s’amuse, “The King Has a Good Time,” portrayed the libertine escapades and adventures of François I of France (1515-1547), the drama featuring as its unconventional protagonist, an ugly, disillusioned, hunchbacked court jester named Triboulet: he was an ambivalent and tragically repulsive character who possessed two souls; physically monstrous, morally evil, and wicked personality, but simultaneously, a magnanimous, kind, gentle, and compassionate man showering unbounded love on his beloved daughter. Hugo’s Triboulet became Verdi’s title character in his opera Rigoletto (1851), the opera that inaugurated his “middle period,” that monumental transitional period in his compositional career in which he began to develop more profound operatic subjects. Verdi’s immediate triumph with Rigoletto in 1851 inspired and propelled him forward.

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Almost simultaneously, he began working on the composition of his next two operas: Il Trovatore (Premiere in January 1853), and La Traviata (Premiere in March 1853). As a tribute to Verdi’s genius, no two operas could be so distinctly different in character and style. Il Trovatore is a Romantic melodrama full of “blood and thunder” musical explosions, which owes much of its structural provenance to the early 19th century bel canto traditions. La Traviata is a magical and sublime musical portrait of a tragic heroine, a bittersweet symphonic-type of opera that sweeps like an emotional tide as it conveys powerful moments of emotional truth in each stage of the heroine’s tragic plight.

I

l Trovatore is based on the 1836 play, El Trovador, written by García Gutiérrez, a renowned early 19th century Spanish romantic playwright. Gutiérrez’s play was extremely popular and inherently a perfect operatic subject for Verdi: its flamboyant melodrama is saturated with fantastic, complicated, and bizarre incidents, together with extreme passions of love and noble sacrifice. The play’s intrigues provided Verdi with an opportunity to fulfil his new ambitions to inject novel, unconventional, unusual, and bizarre themes into his opera stories. In the Romantic era, most underlying opera stories never strayed far from established wellknown plays and novels. Thus, many opera stories during the period were adapted from recognized great works: Schiller, Shakespeare, Byron, Hugo, Scott, and Bulwer-Lytton. In effect, opera stories in the Romantic era were equivalent to the cinema of a 100 years later: they satisfied the public’s thirst to have successful books or plays transformed into a different medium. Thus, Gutiérrez’s play, a popular romantic melodrama that overflowed

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with consuming passions, as well as Alexandre Dumas fils’ equally popular novel, La Dame aux Camélias, became Verdi’s choices for the underlying stories for the operas that would follow Rigoletto: Il Trovatore and La Traviata. Salvatore Cammarano became Verdi’s personal choice to write the libretto for Il Trovatore. He had written the libretti for Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), and earlier, Verdi’s own Alzira (1845) and La Battaglia di Legnano (1849). Verdi considered Cammarano a quintessential operatic poet, in particular, a genius with a very special flair for words: Cammarano was the poet whom he hoped would later fulfill his lifelong ambition to bring Shakespeare’s King Lear to the opera stage, a dream that never reached fruition. Cammarano’s literary genius skillfully transformed the Gutiérrez El Trovador play into a dramatically scintillating opera. Nevertheless, the final libretto has become one of the enigmas of the opera world. Many opera aficionados and critics believe that no study of Il Trovatore’s complicated plot can make it coherent or intelligible: it reputedly took Verdi 21 days to complete Il Trovatore, but for many, an intellient understanding of the story has become a more time consuming feat. Part of the difficulty in understanding the Il Trovatore story arises from Cammarano’s literary style: the poet relished the opportunity to add variations and obscurities to the story. But the real complication is attributed to his penchant for flowery diction and pompous prose, a style which owes its origin to the old fashioned libretto Italiano tradition of the time. Cammarano’s genius with words created a language that at times seemed stilted and monotonous: bells were never bells but “sacred bronzes”; and midnight was traditionally the

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“hour of the dead.” Adding to the later coherence dilemma of Il Trovatore, many later English translations of the story have tended to err and blunder in their translation and explanation of the plot.

W

hen the curtain rises on Il Trovatore, the years 1409 and 1410, a murderous civil war is being fought for the succession to the Spanish throne. Manrico is the hero of the story: he is a troubadour, one of those knightly poetmusicians from Medieval times, the archetype of courtly love. He is the “son” of the gypsy, Azucena, and fights for the cause of the pretender, the Duke of Urgel: the current Count di Luna leads the armies of King Juan I of Aragon. Manrico and di Luna, enemies in war, are also rivals for the hand of Leonora, a lady-in-waiting to the Queen of Aragon. The underlying irony and ultimate tragedy of the story revolves around the fact that these two men, violent enemies in war and bitter rivals in love, are unaware that they are brothers. ll Trovatore is a fantastic horror tale in the true Gothic genre. As such, its story hinges on an incident that took place 15 years before the curtain rises: the execution of the gypsy Azucena’s mother by the old Count di Luna. The engine that drives the entire Il Trovatore melodrama is fueled by Azucena’s revenge for her mother’s execution. Azucena’s character was so dominating in the original Gutiérrez story that the English stage version bore the title, The Gypsy’s Vengeance. In the fifteenth century, the Spanish gypsy population was a tiny minority that had drifted from southern France. They were perceived by society as a detested underclass, stereotyped and denounced for licentiousness, treason, and heresy, the kidnapping of children, and a variety of unholy acts. Likewise, they were

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hated and feared for their dark skins, their silver earrings, and blanket-like garments, and most of all, for their thievery. The Church became paranoid with the gypsy population, considering them sorcerers whose witchcraft was condemned as heresy and blasphemy. The Inquisition, created in 1480 (and abolished some 350 years later in 1834) persecuted the gypsy population as pagans and witches; bishops even excommunicated persons as heretics who let gypsies read their palms. The gypsies in the Il Trovatore story, Manrico, Azucena, and her earlier executed mother, would automatically have become victims of those tides of hate where the supreme punishment for their presumed sorcery was execution at the stake. The stake became the highly visible vehicle for punishment and retribution against blasphemers: the Czech reformer Jan Hus was burned in 1415, and Joan of Arc was condemned as a witch in 1431. According to the Il Trovatore story’s time-frame, Azucena’s mother would have gone to the stake in 1394, 15 years before the curtain rises, and Azucena’s death would have taken place when the curtain falls in 1410. The di Luna family in the Il Trovatore story bear the customary suspicion of gypsies. After the di Luna infant son became deathly ill, the old Count was convinced that the child’s illness was caused by an “evil eye” curse cast on him by an old gypsy who had been seen nearby. The gypsy was apprehended, condemned, and immediately burned alive at the stake. Her daughter, Azucena, witnessed her mother ’s horrible execution, became traumatized and delirious, and heeding her mother’s last invocation, swore revenge against the di Luna family. Azucena kidnapped the sick di Luna infant, intending to exact retribution by casting him into the smoldering

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fire, but in her craze and frenzy of the moment, she accidentally cast her own son into the fire. The child whom she would eventually escape with would actually be the di Luna infant son, Garzía, the di Luna child she would rear as her son, Manrico. However, within this melodrama of frenzied, irrational passions, there flowers an almost transcendental love between Manrico and Leonora: their love fuels a violent rivalry between Manrico and di Luna for Leonora’s hand. Nevertheless, the core of the story and the engine that propels the melodrama, remains Azucena’s lifelong obsession for vengeance against the di Luna family: it is the gypsy daughter ’s resolve which drives the Il Trovatore to its ultimate, tragic conclusion.

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eonora and Azucena, Il Trovatore’s principal female characters, are brilliantly contrasting characterizations, each of whom inhabits opposite ends of the human spectrum. Leonora is the heroine of the story, the ultimate portrait of a woman capable of profound love as well as unquestionable religious faith. However, Leonora becomes a victim of an incomprehensible and imperceptible world surrounding her with violent human hatred and brutality. She faces that eternal conflict of the sacred vs. the profane: she forgoes her vows at the convent when Manrico suddenly appears, and in the end, she commit suicide by taking poison, sacrificing her life for her beloved Manrico. Leonora is a noble heroine trapped in the conflicts and tensions of her fate and destiny. Verdi honors her through his sublime music, providing her with melodies that seem to be minted from pure musical gold. Leonora’s music contains aspiring and inspiring qualities with phrases that are rich, lavish, arching, and soaring: her Act I aria, Tacea la notte, in

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which she describes her first acquaintance with Manrico; her Act II, Scene 2, Sei Tu dal ciel, the glorious rescue ensemble; and in Act IV, D’amor sull’ali rosee, her expression of undaunted passion for Manrico before she embarks on her doomed sacrifice. Azucena is the keystone of the Il Trovatore melodrama, and without her, the opera could not exist: Azucena is the engine of vengeance who drives the entire drama. Even more profoundly than Leonora, Verdi musically sculpted the character of Azucena with a heretofore unknown depth. Azucena was an entirely new figure in Verdi’s female gallery of singers: up until Il Trovatore, Verdi had never made significant use or exploited the dramatic qualities of the mezzo-soprano or contralto voice in a principal role. The introduction of Azucena in Il Trovatore represents the beginning in a glorious line of darker female voices: Ulrica in Un Ballo in Maschera, Eboli in Don Carlo, and Amneris in Aïda. Azucena’s bizarre character drives the plot with her two great passions: her maternal love for Manrico, and her obsessive passion to avenge her mother’s execution. Azucena is a swarthy and ominous character who swaggers savagely as she recounts the vivid horror of how her mother was led to execution, and in her delirium, murdered her own infant son. The tragedy of the story is that her vengeance leads her to destroy Manrico, the one being in the world whom she loves. Azucena is the counterpart of another grotesque character whom Verdi had created only two years earlier in 1851: Rigoletto. These two Gothic-type characters, Rigoletto and Azucena, are repulsive outsiders, in many respects, shocking forces to Verdi’s nineteenth century audiences, who expected to see only beautiful heroines and handsome heroes

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onstage; villains could be ugly, but they were only to be presented as secondary figures. During Verdi’s “middle period,” he was at a critical turning point in his operatic evolution: he was seeking more profound characterization and was willing to stretch the imagination in his search for the bizarre; he insisted on making major protagonists out of Rigoletto, a mocked and cynical hunchback, as well as Azucena, a reviled and stereotypically ugly gypsy witch. These two monstrous characters share similar evil demons and destinies: Rigoletto brings about the death of his own daughter, murdered by the assassin he hired to murder the Duke of Mantua; Azucena causes the death of Manrico, the surrogate son she adores, first by claiming under di Luna’s torture that she is his mother, and secondly, and more importantly, by hiding from di Luna the fact that he and Manrico are actually brothers. Azucena could have saved Manrico, but possessed with revenge, she did not: she becomes the horrible, immoral spirit of destructive humanity. Rigoletto and Azucena are, therefore, the male and female faces of defeated revenge: revenge that ultimately brings about fatal injustice and tragedy. Both operas, Rigoletto and Il Trovatore, are tragedies imbedded with irony. The final horror for both Rigoletto and Azucena is that they believe they are exacting justice. Rigoletto proclaims: Egli è delitto, punizion so io, “He is crime, I am punishment.” Azucena, expressing the sinister leitmotif of Il Trovatore, repeatedly proclaims her dying mother’s decree: “Mi vendica, “Avenge me.” Nevertheless, in the end, both see their beloved children lying dead, the only difference between them is that Rigoletto probably lives on in agony, haunted by his misdeed; Azucena surely died at the stake as did her mother.

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emperamentally, Verdi was an idealist, a true son of the Enlightenment, who possessed a noble conception of humanity. He abominated absolutism and deified civil liberty, which ultimately resulted in his lifelong manifesto and crusade against tyranny; personal, social, political, or ecclesiastical. His operas, Don Carlos (1867) and Aïda (1872), if anything, resound with profound underlying socio-political statements about the abuse and corruption of power, and the inherent impotence it inflicts on humanity. Verdi was also a pessimist and skeptic who perceived a cruel and unjust world, irrational, and hypocritical in its promises of human progress. Many experiences in his life were recalled with much bitterness: as an infant, his mother fled with him to escape vindicating Russians who were venting their hatred against Napoleon with blind slaughter; his two children and young wife died early in his life; his mother died the year before Il Trovatore; librettist Cammarano died in the midst of writing the libretto for Il Trovatore; and many of his noble social, and political ideals seemed to be degenerating in fin du siecle Europe. The characters in Il Trovatore represent emotionally charged symbols of Verdi’s pessimistic view an existential and hostile world. The story possesses no redemptive values, but rather, a profound and dramatically truthful portrayal of irrational obsessions, intense emotions and passions, pathos, and despair. All the characters suffer intensely: Manrico/Garzía is a lonely man, doomed to the cruelty of war but momentarily redeemed through Leonora’s love; he is executed without ever knowing his real identity. Leonora is unable to comprehend the hostility and violence surrounding her: she sacrifices herself, preferring a martyred death rather than the lust-crazed di Luna. Di Luna is irrational and virtually insane in his insatiable

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lust for Leonora, the woman he tries to possess but cannot: he ultimately transforms his life into an obsession with hatred which nurtures the story’s final horror and tragedy: killing his own brother. The true tragic character in Il Trovatore is Azucena, the woman of powerful irrational passions. She triggers the melodrama’s ultimate tragedy by killing the man who had indeed become her son; the son she could have saved by revealing to di Luna that he was indeed his brother. For Verdi, Azucena’s persona is the essence of the underlying story of Il Trovatore: she is the ultimate symbol of a universe of cruel creatures; humanity possessing destructive, irrational powers and passions.

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l Trovatore is saturated with melodic vitality, energetic musical inventions, and an explosion of eminently beautiful lyricism that possess a driving, propulsive quality. The opera’s characterizations are sharp and contrasting, and together with its super-charged emotions, it swiftly speeds from climax to climax. In retrospect, Il Trovatore is a 150 year old phenomenon whose impact remains unique and seemingly eternal in the world of Italian opera, an overwhelmingly popular and perennial favorite: of all of Verdi’s output, it was the most loved opera in his own day. At the time of Il Trovatore, Richard Wagner’s theories of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the ideal of the total artwork, began to infest the European opera world. Those theories idealized opera as music drama, a goal that could be achieved through a synthesis and fusion of text, music, and all other art forms. As the second half of the 19 th century unfolded, Wagner and his theories eventually revolutionized the opera art form: his theories

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worked well for him; Verdi’s techniques equally suited his own style as well as those of his audiences. Verdi’s Il Trovatore is a score saturated with bel canto, “oom-pah-pah hit-parade” songs, “organ grinder” music, and many of its accompaniments locked to dance rhythms. Theoretically, Il Trovatore represents the antithesis of Wagnerism: it was the essence of an intolerable Italianism in lyric drama, and the devils were Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and, of course, Verdi; Wagner was obsessed to rescue and redeem the world from their artistic evil. Wagner introduced his music dramas, the Ring cycle and Tristan and Isolde. After Il Trovatore, Verdi’s style progressed and matured to grander levels, and his operas became more organically unified in terms of their musical and dramatic integration. Likewise, the Italian opera school conceived its own music of the future: the verismo style of Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and Puccini. Il Trovatore represents the end of a particular era and genre of Italian opera: it is the last of the great Italian Romantic melodramas. However, it is a work which evolved from early and mid-nineteenth century opera styles: it represents the sum and substance of Italian opera, because its focus is voice and song, essential ingredients that will survive until the whole structure of Italian opera will have disappeared. Verdi himself would eventually leave the Il Trovatore style far behind him and eloquently advance toward his own indelible musico-dramaticism in his last four operas: Don Carlo, Aïda, Otello and Falstaff. Nevertheless, his Il Trovatore continues to remain a jewel in his operatic crown. But the ultimate greatness of Il Trovatore is that it reverently and piously follows the great Italian traditions in which the voice,

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song, and melody, remain the supreme focus of the opera. Verdi saturated this score with unforgettable musical gems, which seem to become brighter over time: Leonora’s Tacea la notte, the Anvil Chorus, Azucena’s wild ballad Stride la vampa, di Luna’s Il balen, Manrico’s Mal reggendo, and Di quella pira, and every note of the Tower Scene, Miserere, and the final Prison Scene. These musical inventions represent a magnificent legacy which become imbedded in the mind just as familiar sentences from literature become catch-phrases and proverbs. Since Il Trovatore, new currents and trends have arisen in opera, and there are certainly vastly more intelligible and cohesive opera dramas. Nevertheless, Il Trovatore is firmly rooted to the opera stage; its devoted audiences continually hypnotized by the lyric splendor Verdi provided for his troubadour of Aliaferia whose serenades and last addio seem to become engraved in memory not only after the curtain falls, but for eternity. Il Trovatore is one of Verdi’s most supreme lyrical masterpieces, a work without parallel in the entire operatic canon: a late flowering of the great Italian romantic tradition. It is saturated with masterful melodic inventions, and lush and vividly beautiful music that are fused with powerful dramatic passion and power. This virtually unique opera runs like a thoroughbred, breaks out of the gate, and charges to the finish line where all of its romantic agony and Gothic horror unite in magnificent and thunderous lyric splendor: Il Trovatore provides the sounds and furies of towering passions. •

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