Verdi - Il Trovatore (Royal Opera House, 2017)

Giuseppe Verdi - Il Trovatore

Royal Opera House, 2017

Richard Farnes, David Bösch, Anita Rachvelishvili, Gregory Kunde, Lianna Haroutounian, Vitaliy Bilyy, Francesca Chiejina, Samuel Sakker

Opus Arte - Blu-ray

The principal challenge for a director approaching Il Trovatore must be to find a way of making its notoriously implausible plot half-way intelligible and work around its operatic template of mannerisms and numbers. It's a tall order and the best you can do is just attempt to tone things down and let Verdi's overheated orchestration provide all the drama. The other approach is to just let fly, run with it, but you need exceptional Verdi singers to make that convincing. David Bösch's production for the Royal Opera House tries to do both, but the focus on mood doesn't quite make up for the static direction and not all the singing performances are quite good enough to carry it off either. There are however some good points to the production and the performances, certainly enough to ride on Verdi's music and bring this work to its breathless conclusion.

The set designs for David Bösch's production settle for the generic modern day setting of a dark barb-wired landscape of wartime devastation that is now unfortunately quite common at the Royal Opera House. As far as mood goes, the dark gothic minimalism works well to downplay some of the more extravagant drama, which is instead allowed to simmer in the recurring presence and imagery of fire. A simple gesture in the opening scene for example, where Ferrando having given his troops and himself the heebie-jeebies over the curse of the evil wicked witch burnt at the stake who still haunts the Count di Luna's family, tentatively kicks over the remnant of the burning camp fire, expecting it looks to find bone lying there.

There's a similar reliance on mood and suggestion elsewhere. Azucena's caravan at the gypsy camp is decorated with macabre looking dolls pinned to its outside, the scene eerily lit by the orange flames of the camp flickering brazier. In terms of direction however there's little thought or effort made to make the characters or the drama feel real of convincing. It's all rather static, the scenes remain a collection of disconnected dramas with no flow or follow-through that aren't resolved in any way until the conclusion. Like the ROH's controversial 2015 Guillaume Tell, it unimaginatively relies on generic groups of soldiers/thugs threatening captives in bleak war-torn landscapes and subjecting them to brutal beatings, torture and execution.

What counts here and ultimately determines the nature of the production is the quality of the Verdian musical and singing performances. In terms of the musical interpretation, the early indications were that Richard Farnes doesn't seem to have much to offer as far as arrangements and interpretation, but in reality it seems it's more just an indication of good pacing. The delivery matches the early setting of mood, building on the drama, letting Verdi's score for the opera take on its own momentum, and when those moments of thunderous impact are needed, it proves to be a full-blooded account.

The singing however is a mixed bag as far as the division between the male and female roles goes. Although there are some impressive moments in the performances of Lianna Haroutounian's Leonora and Vitaliy Bilyy's Conte di Luna, they aren't totally convincing or always secure in their delivery. Both are a little static and their characters lack personality and direction - a fault as much with Verdi and Cammarano's writing as much as the director's failure to bring them to life. Haroutounian is certainly capable, her 'Tu vedrai che amore in terra' quite impressive in its own right, if still not having a good flow or connection to character and situation.

Anita Rachvelishvili and Gregory Kunde are much better equipped to handle the technical and dramatic challenges of Verdi's writing for the voice, and as Azucena and Manrico, their voices and performances ultimately hold more sway over the outcome and effectiveness of the production. Rachvelishvili comes out on top, taking the role of Azucena with relish, matching Verdi's intensity but not overselling it. Kunde is always a joy to hear, a dramatic rather than a belcanto Rossinian, and that kind of dramatic lyricism serves him well for Verdi. He brings real character and personality to Manrico in his stage presence and singing. When these two are in alignment with the thunderous performance of the Royal Opera Orchestra under Richard Farnes, it's enough to carry this Il Trovatore over the line. That's no mean feat.

The Opus Arte Blu-ray presents the recording of the opera on its dark stage very well throughout to such an extent that you can almost feel the heat of the conflagration in the closing scene. The High Resolution audio stereo and surround mixes are superb, giving clear presence to the voices, and if you can listen to it loud (on headphones maybe) the impact of the Anvil Chorus and the more thunderous parts of the score is just amazing. The extra features are not plentiful, just a snappy 3-minute introduction with soundbites from cast and the creatives and a 3-minute look at the set designs. The booklet however contains a very interesting essay by Flora Willson on the history of the writing of the opera and the working relationship between Verdi and Cammarano revealed in their correspondence.

Links: Royal Opera House

Verdi - Les Vêpres Siciliennes

Giuseppe Verdi - Les Vêpres Siciliennes

Royal Opera House, London, 2013

Antonio Pappano, Stefan Herheim, Lianna Haroutounian, Bryan Hymel, Erwin Schrott, Michael Volle, Michelle Daly, Neal Cooper, Nicholas Darmanin, Jung Soo Yun, Jihoon Kim, Jean Teitgen, Jeremy White

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden - 4 November 2013

It was a little bit disappointing to discover that Verdi's famous 'Four Seasons' ballet sequence had been cut from this new production of Les Vêpres Siciliennes, only now being performed at the Royal Opera House in the original French version for the first time. Stefan Herheim is usually such a thorough director, meticulous in his construction (and often reconstruction) of works, examining them from every level from their subject matter to context and subtext. Surely Verdi's 30-minute long ballet forms an important part of Les Vêpres Siciliennes?

On the other hand, there's a good reason why the ballet is often cut even on those rare occasions that the original French version of the work is put on. There are Grand Opéra mannerisms aplenty in the five acts of Les Vêpres Siciliennes, perhaps too many for a modern audience to endure. As it turns out however, Stefan Herheim doesn't actually shy away from the challenges of incorporating the ballet but rather cleverly finds an alternative and rather more acceptable means of including it. Paying careful attention to the music as always and recognising that all of the themes that are brought out in the music of the ballet are there also in the heart of Verdi's remarkable scoring for the work, he includes ballet elements throughout the length of the opera itself.

Those themes, which are condensed within the Four Seasons ballet sequence, are all to do with the changing of the seasons, with life and death, the past, history and politics involved, and how they weigh heavily on families and individuals caught up in momentous events. Verdi's take on grand opéra is extraordinary, the composer making the most of the opportunity to expand his range and take expression in his music much further than before. He weaves these themes dynamically together, finding depth and subtext, suggesting much more than is evident on the surface. Herheim rather fearlessly tries to break these themes down again and find a way to express each of them visually. And, in his own inimitable way, he throws a few other ideas in there for consideration. Despite all this, Les Vêpres Siciliennes surprisingly proves to be a relatively straightforward Herheim production.

Principally, Herheim does what he often does - he brings the composer and the creation of the work into the work itself. What's interesting about the way it's done here however is that it manages to avoid all the usual Risorgimento trappings. The political climate and Verdi's part in the revolutionary activities of the period (often overstated) evidently form a part of it, but the director here is more interested in Verdi in Paris, Verdi writing Grand Opéra, the period, the venue and even the work's place in opera history. Accordingly the most immediately distinctive part of the staging is that it's an opera within an opera. Les Vêpres Siciliennes is played out with the French audience of 1855 taking the place of the French soldiers in 13th-century Sicily, with the interior of the Paris Opera house forming a backdrop and ballet dancers on the stage dressed like those in paintings by Degas.

That sounds like a lot of unnecessary baggage to add on top of the work itself, but Verdi's choice of subject for the French audience is an interesting one and worth exploring since it undoubtedly informed the creation of the work. Arguably it's even more important since Les Vêpres Siciliennes is primarily an opera and not history, the story cobbled together from a libretto for Donizetti's unfinished Le Duc d'Albe which had a 16th century Dutch historical setting. The reason it works so well in this production then is due to another of Herheim's strengths - his ability to make the characters come to life and his use of space on the stage to reflect their personalities and situation, opening up and closing down, only using what is necessary for impact and always finding a way to get that impact across at the right points, if not exactly in a conventional manner. And marshalling diverse forces to make a necessary impact is what opera is all about.

That isn't something that Verdi himself always manages in Les Vêpres Siciliennes. As fascinating a work as it is coming at this period in the composer's career, it is a somewhat imperfect opera. The production and the singing can help, but even they are limited in this particular production. The first two acts in particular are not entirely successful, even though Herheim attempts to establish the prologue to the story in the overture, where Henri's mother - here a dancer at the ballet school run by Procida - is raped by one of the French soldiers, Guy de Montfort. Hélène then appears dressed as a vengeful woman in black, mourning for the loss of her brother Frédéric, carrying his mummified head around with her, waving it accusingly at the French soldiers with the officers sitting behind in the best opera box seats.

Despite some remarkable writing and a powerful account of the score from Antonio Pappano and the Royal Opera House orchestra, the first two acts can't seem to bring any kind of coherence or purpose to the structure in which the events are laid out, and they consequently come across as rather flat. The last thing you need at this stage then is a 30-minute ballet on top of it, so its omission at this point is clearly justified, particularly as there is no shortage of ballet dancers on the stage throughout, and their significance - some wearing white tutus, others black - has been well established in the prologue. All the stops are pulled out however for the impact that the personal situations and events of the past bring to Acts III to V.

Yes, there's glorious music throughout, but even in these latter acts there are traps that could bring the whole thing down, particularly in the unsatisfactory conclusions reached in Act V. Herheim however takes full advantage of Verdi's orchestration of these developments, making powerful use of the choruses that represent the masses of the soldiers and the people, and the people against the soldiers. You can feel in them the sense of simmering nationalist resentment, but because of Herheim's direction, you can also understand the complicated personal issues of the past and the family connections that have been brought into it all which more significantly influence the outcome. It's in high melodrama territory certainly, but Herheim works with the intimacy of Verdi's writing to make it feel real and vital.

It has to feel real and vital as far as the singers are concerned also, and by and large, this was successfully achieved. There was some concern expressed by Marina Poplavskaya's dropping out of the production at the last moment and some opinions expressed that Lianna Haroutounian wasn't a strong enough replacement, but I thought she performed marvellously.  Her Hélène didn't make so much of an impression in the opening acts, but her character gained in strength and personality after the interval, and Haroutounian rose to meet those demands. Bryan Hymel again proved himself well suited to this repertoire particularly as the role of Henri is considerably less punishing than Robert le Diable. Michael Volle was a solid threatening presence as Montfort, the role sung with characteristic nuance and warmth from this performer. Erwin Schrott is also a performer with great personal presence and sang very well, but he seemed a little too laid-back as Procida. Herheim's mastery of the work however and Antonio Pappano's conduction ensured however that everything came together perfectly to achieve the kind of satisfying and powerful conclusion than the work really needs.