by Robert Thicknesse
You approach any performance of Trovatore with a mix of gloating anticipation and trepidation. Could anything be more visceral, more utterly operatic, more grippingly awful and exhilarating? And yet so often it fails to hit the mark, its proudly-worn absurdities simply too obvious to ignore, those passions too stark and insane, those Gypsy pop songs simply too jolly for this blackest of tragedies.
On its debut a couple of years ago, Adele Thomas’s production made a good shot at it, but felt stymied by its set – a big flight of stairs, enclosed by three receding picture frames – and by its chorus of jokey, twitching, clown-suited factions, part Spamalot, part football crowd; self-parody lurks in plain sight in Trovatore, and we seemed to be flirting with it too boldly.
It’s a different story this time, with Simon Iorio reviving the production. The same things happen, those capering imps in horned helmets still hop and scamper about the set, the silly hats and shambolic soldiers are very much still there, but there is an intensity to the performance that freezes the ironic smile on your face. We always knew that those steps were no stairway to heaven, but this time round it’s perfectly clear that they are the off-ramp of the road to hell – and we are right in it. Those constant Hieronymus Bosch quotes and references: they’re no joke.
Compelled to live out their deranged drama in this dreadful place, the four main characters play their parts with unswerving focus: they hate, they love, they seek revenge with the utterly humourless tenacity of variously-programmed Terminators. I don’t want to harp on too much about “last time”, but Jamie Barton’s peculiar version of Azucena as a kind of panto bag-lady was simply too close to the comedy of the chorus.
No danger of that with Agnieszka Rehlis, whose fury and madness is contained in a scary stillness, and who confines herself to actually singing the notes as Verdi intended, a proper musical line delivered with enormous strength and, in fact, considerable beauty too. This Azucena keeps her shattered life and personality together through the sheer purity of her mission to destroy: she is back where she belongs as the immediate motor of all the horror. Trovatore’s greatest quality is its terribilità, its ability to genuinely create the extravagant existential horror Verdi was after; this Azucena has moments where that really happens.
Stillness is the watchword all round, in fact – reminding you that powerful acting is not just about movement. Apart from a few strangely unfocused top notes, Rachel Willis-Sørensen delivers Leonora’s racked arias with the despairing beauty you long to hear, these threnodies spinning out into the empty universe. Compared to everyone else, Alexei Isaev’s Luna can only seem a little dull, dogged in pursuit of Leonora but with little idea of what is really happening. Perhaps this is because Luna at some point displays a regular sort of non-certifiable operatic warm-heartedness: he’s just not as mad as the others.
Pleasingly, the trovatore himself is the centre and star. Michael Fabiano’s Manrico is on fire, a rebel of pure passion, the most forceful projection of extreme emotional pressure conveyed through on-the-edge singing that is completely thrilling.
Giacomo Sagripanti conducts it all with a lot of self-effacing style. The best moments come when nothing at all is happening, just one or two characters lost in the blackness, with pleading, sobbing, lost voices drifting in from somewhere offstage. Verdi never attempted anything so nihilistic again – thank goodness. But there’s nothing like Trovatore. And this is a good one.