Some years ago, when I asked Jonathan Miller about directing opera, he declared outright, “I wouldn’t touch historic kitsch like Trovatore with a barge pole. It’s got wonderful music and beautiful arias in it, but the story is just Madame Tussaud rubbish.”
And certainly Il Trovatore, though often polled among the most popular of all Verdi operas, merits its many parodies. Where else can you find, in a mere few hours, revenge, a threesome of lovers, much premonition, identities mistaken, suicide, murder, concealed truths, poison, kidnapping, beheading, undying devotion, burning at the stake –have I left anything out? And where else such deliciously melodramatic lines like these: “Have you come down from heaven or am I in heaven with you?” or “I had burned my own son!” or “Rage is seething in my breast?”
Still, since I first experienced Il Trovatore as a lad many years ago, the over the top inner logic of the plot, expressed through sometimes equally improbable Verdian musical devices, has always been easy to accept on its own terms. It’s not psychologically sophisticated stuff, to be sure, but it does border on the mythic and it is delightfully, unrelentingly melodramatic in a gripping way. So I must confess that I very much enjoyed the opportunity to experience Opera Hamilton’s recent production which offered many pleasures.
Opera Hamilton’s Il Trovatore opened with five flame bearers and helmeted soldiers gathered to hear about “a child’s bones half-burned and still smoldering’ and “a dark, despicable Gypsy hag,” an “evil hag” as it were, who was burned at the stake and whose cursed daughter seeks vengeance. Michael Ganio’s spare but evocative setting –two crosses suggest a convent- and Valerie Kuinka’s assertively unsettling projections -including a moon, fog, bare trees and branches- gave the goings-on a dark and foreboding context. The prison setting, with its rear-lighting by Steve Ross extending shadows toward the audience, created a dramatically oppressive atmosphere that was most unnerving. The only distracting visual gaff was the group of nuns garbed, so it seemed, like extras from Lawrence of Arabia.
Conductor David Speers leaned more to supporting and enveloping his singers rather than driving them, and from a balcony seat one could enjoy the collective presence of orchestra and voices as one. The necessarily reduced orchestra, though not big scale as some might prefer their Verdi, offered a sense of intimate urgency that was most suited to this frenzied tale directed with efficient insight by Valerie Kuinka. The male chorus was consistently gentle and delicate in sound and very pleasing to the ear, although they did not seem like men ever bloodied in battle or especially desirous for loot in declaring, “There will be much treasure today.”
Each of the four leads contributed distinctly in voice to the dramatic thrust of the story. As Leonora, Joni Henson offered a full fruity wine of a voice in mid and lower registers although, in the first half, the roundness of tone became narrower in higher passages and even seemed a different voice. Later the upper register did prove a natural tonal extension of the lower. To Azucena, mezzo Emilia Boteva brought compelling vocal powers that seemed naturally infused with drama, so much so that she seemed to have otherworldly connections. Her tormented, judgmental and driven facial expression added to her commanding intensity of voice and presence, and one hardly noticed that, with a six by six beam on her shoulders, she still managed much flexibility in her fingers. She was one scary woman.
In Count di Luna, James Weston offered a voice of grace, authority and warmly resonant sound, quite seamless and fluid with the pleasing ease of air, a deeply rooted lyrical instrument. More than a concise and reacting villain, this Count was a touchingly obsessed human being of some inner complexity. His presence brought dramatic texture to the production. After a few initial bigger notes that seemed pushed, perhaps the result of a bad wig day and errant hairs breathed in, Richard Margison’s Manrico was delivered throughout with a creamy ring in softer passages and benign energy and magnitude in his heroic moments, consistent always with high notes that thrilled. To experience such a potent vocal resource, one that fills the world’s major opera houses and now within perhaps eighty feet, is an opportunity offered by Opera Hamilton’s recent move to the Dofasco Centre. One felt the tingling effects of grand opera.
So a final word about next season’s offerings: another quintessentially theatrical masterwork from Verdi’s “middle” period in Rigoletto, Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers with its eternally heart-touching duet Au Fond du Temple Saint, and the always celebratory Popera PLUS! with its usual quartet of opera stars of today and tomorrow, always a revelation. These are difficult times for the arts to survive and to have a regional company buck economic constraints and consistently produce freshly realized productions of impressive standards, especially in an intimate theatre like the Dofasco Centre, makes opera lovers in the Hamilton region a lucky bunch indeed. Subscriptions are available at 905-527-7627.