BaL 9.11.24 - Verdi: Il trovatore

[Pulcinella]

1500
Building a Library

Verdi's Il trovatore with Roger Parker

Written hot on the heels of Rigoletto, and premiered just two months before La traviata, Il trovatore (The Troubador) is one of Verdi's most dramatic operas, and one of his most popular successes. It is packed with great music, including the bombastic ‘Anvil Chorus’, Azucena’s ‘Stride la vampa’ (The flame crackles!) and tenor Manrico’s heroic ‘Di quella pira’ (The flames of the pyre). The story, based on a play by Antonio García Gutiérrez, has been described as "a high-flown, sprawling melodrama, packed with all manner of fantastic and bizarre incident."

Presto link here (but I expect that some may contain just the odd aria or two):

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/works/59496--verdi-il-trovatore/browse

Recommended version:
Maria Callas (soprano), Rolando Panerei (baritone) et al., La Scala, Herbert von Karajan (cond.)
Warner 2564634094

[Darloboy]

Previous BaL recommendations:

Jonathan Keates (May 95): Price, Domingo, Milnes, New Philh O, Mehta + Cellini as mid-price choice

Hilary Finch (Nov 05): Bonisolli, Price, Cappuccilli, BPO, Karajan

[smittims]

An old favourite of mine is the Serafin on Deutsche Grammophon, with Antonietta Stella. I was delighted to find a good-condition set of the pink-cloth-bound LPs a few years ago. It was on Universal's '2CD' bargain label for years.

[Pulcinella]

An old favourite of mine is the Serafin on Deutsche Grammophon, with Antonietta Stella. I was delighted to find a good-condition set of the pink-cloth-bound LPs a few years ago. It was on Universal's '2CD' bargain label for years.

That's the version I have on CD.
Only seen live once (that I can recall): probably a WNO production in Bristol or Oxford.

PS: Dear Diary tells me it was on 5/7/1985, and indeed a WNO production in Oxford.

[LHC]

The Mehta recording is very good and probably still first choice as a recommendable recording.

The Karajan recording with Callas, Di Stefano Panerai and Barbieri is to my mind even more thrilling, although its only in mono and showing its age (1956). If you can find it, the DVD of Karajan's performance at the Vienna State Opera in 1978 is also pretty special with Domingo in fine voice, Kabaivanska, Cappuccilli and Cossotto. The only drawback is that the cast take extensive curtain calls at the end of every scene!!! If you can ignore that, its very good.

I also have a soft spot for Colin Davis's recording with Carreras, Ricciarelli, Mazurok and Toczyska. Not the most dramatic, but probably the most beautiful singing of all the recordings.

I also like the blu ray recording from Covent Garden with Jose Cura and Dmitri Hvorostovsky, mainly because I was there. It wouldn't be a first choice, but its a nice reminder of the performances I attended.

[Wolfram]

The Mehta recording is very good and probably still first choice as a recommendable recording.

The Karajan recording with Callas, Di Stefano Panerai and Barbieri is to my mind even more thrilling, although its only in mono and showing its age (1956). If you can find it, the DVD of Karajan's performance at the Vienna State Opera in 1978 is also pretty special with Domingo in fine voice, Kabaivanska, Cappuccilli and Cossotto. The only drawback is that the cast take extensive curtain calls at the end of every scene!!! If you can ignore that, its very good.

I also have a soft spot for Colin Davis's recording with Carreras, Ricciarelli, Mazurok and Toczyska. Not the most dramatic, but probably the most beautiful singing of all the recordings.

I also like the blu ray recording from Covent Garden with Jose Cura and Dmitri Hvorostovsky, mainly because I was there. It wouldn't be a first choice, but it’s ith a nice reminder of the performances I attended.

With Roger Parker officiating the Callas/Karajan is sure to figure prominently - and quite rightly too.

[Wolfram]

An old favourite of mine is the Serafin on Deutsche Grammophon, with Antonietta Stella. I was delighted to find a good-condition set of the pink-cloth-bound LPs a few years ago. It was on Universal's '2CD' bargain label for years.

And with the wonderful Carlo Bergonzi.

[Pulcinella]

And with the wonderful Carlo Bergonzi.

Indeed.

[Master Jacques]

For sheer, somewhat guilty excitement ...

Franco Corelli,
Gabriella Tucci,
Giulietta Simionato,
Robert Merrill,
Ferruccio Mazzoli

Rome Opera Orchestra and Chorus
c. Thomas Schippers
(EMI Classics CD 763640 2)

Less than complete text (traditional, bad old "theatre cuts") but frantically exciting and red-blooded. Otherwise Mehta (safe and steady, uncut) and Bergonzi/Serafin are in the Callas/Karajan league and equally necessary.

[Barbirollians]

Callas/HVK for me.

[makropulos]

I have a serious obsession with Trovatore and many recordings of it. Callas/Karajan is certainly near the top of the list, as are some of Karajan's later performances – it was an opera he always did superbly. Serafin is very persuasive and Mehta's RCA set finds him at his best. Among more recent versions, I am very fond of Pappano's EMI set with Alagna and Gheorghiu. There's also a very exciting live Met performance from 1957 with Leontyne Price and Franco Corelli, conducted by Fausto Cleva.

One fascinating alternative to all of these is the Oehms live recording from Ludwigsburg, conducted by Michael Hofstetter with an orchestra of period instruments and a cast including Simone Kermes as Leonora and Herbert Lippert as Manrico.

Very much looking forward to this BAL.

[vinteuil]

... thinking of the obscurity of some reviewers' choices (Marina Frolova-Walker for the Schumann piano quartet. most recently Tasmin Little for the Schubert octet) I have high hopes that Roger Parker might opt for Carlo Sabajna at la Scala with Aureliano Pertile, Apollo Granforte, Maria Carena, and Irene Minghini-Cattaneo in 1930



.

[Pulcinella]

I rather like this, from the Pan Book of Opera (1964).

The plot is complicated, and far-fetched in an old-fashioned way: we are to believe that, before the opera opened [sic], the gipsy Azucena, raving, 'hurled into the flames her own child, instead of the young Count (thus preserving, with an almost supernatural instinct for opera, the baby that was destined to grow up into a tenor with a voice high enough to sing '"Di quella pira").' We quote this from one of the classics of operatic literature [Kobbé 1919)] – though we must spoil the fun a little by adding that the high C's with which the tenors insist on preening themselves in this aria are not Verdi's at all, but an interpolation.

[Master Jacques]

I rather like this, from the Pan Book of Opera (1964).

The Pan Book of Opera was the foundation of my operatic life, and it's nice to hear you quoting one of its jolliest passages. Good stuff!

But leaving aside the time-worn quip about Il trovatore's allegedly 'old-fashioned' plot (by what criteria, one constantly wonders, apart from TV realism?) I'd have to take issue with the idea that the top Cs are in any sense out of place. Just as in Bellini or Donizetti - which this opera apotheosises - it is an error to conclude that because the high notes aren't in the score, Verdi didn't expect them. We've got beyond the revisionist notion that the notes in a 19th-century Italian opera score tell the whole story, and should be adhered to religiously.

That's unhistorical pedantry: there were singer conventions at play, which these composers had firmly in mind. If Verdi had written some top Cs into his score, singers would have taken that as code that they should be aiming for Top Es! The line he writes specifically invites the top C variation, and goes off like a damp squib if sung "straight" (as witness some of the recordings here, which rein in their tenors to disappointing effect at that moment.)

[Master Jacques]

I have a serious obsession with Trovatore and many recordings of it.

Me too - I have to have a Trovatore fix at least once every six months or so, or my sense of well-being suffers. I've taken good note of your Oehms Live recommendation, for next time a need a rush!