Stage Director Marco Gandini Set Designer Italo
Grassi Costume Designer Simona Morresi Lighting Designer
Virginio Levrio Choirmasters Natalya Popovich,Victor
Kuturaev Il trovatore, composed by Giuseppe Verdi
in 1853, is one of his most popular operas. It is a romantic drama with an
intricate plot and deathly mysteries, passions of love and fierce duels,
vengeance and a tragic denouement. Unaware of their kinship, two brothers, Count
di Luna and the troubadour Manrico, are bitter rivals in their fight for power
and love for Countess Leonora. Ridden by jealousy and vengeance, di Luna kills
his own brother whom he has been looking for all his life as he promised to his
now deceased father.
Basing his opera on the play El Trovador by
the Spanish playwright Antonio Garcia Gutierrez, Verdi created vivid musical
portraits of the characters conveyed by the fabulously melodious arias and
duets. These are the gypsy Azucena, who keeps the fateful secret of Manrico’s
birth and is torn between her boundless motherly love and vengeance, the
perfidious Count di Luna, the noble Manrico and his faithful beloved Leonora.
They are supplemented by the picturesque figures of the gypsies, monks,
soldiers, and the Count’s courtiers expressed in the splendid choruses. The
verve and gorgeousness of Verdi’s score will be displayed to the audience by
Novaya Opera’s Chief Conductor Jan Latham-Koenig.
To stage one of Verdi’s most mysterious
masterpieces, the Novaya Opera Theatre has invited an Italian production team,
including stage director Marco Gandini, set designer Italo Grassi and costume
designer Simona Morresi, who have worked together before on successful
projects.
Marco Gandini has worked in the major Italian
opera houses (Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Rome Opera, San Carlo Theatre in
Naples, La Fenice in Venice) and internationally at the Metropolitan Opera in
New York, Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv, opera houses in Los Angeles and Washington,
the Royal Opera House in London, Teatro Real in Madrid, Teatro Liceu in
Barcelona, Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. The sets for most of his
productions have been designed by Italo Grassi. A few years ago the team was
joined by costume designer Simona Morresi, who in 2011 took part in the
production of Verdi’s Falstaff (in Tokyo) and Simon Boccanegra (in
Seoul). Il trovatore in Novaya Opera will be the third project of the
creative team.
Marco Gandini, stage director:
“This opera has three main components: the world of Count di Luna,
the world of Leonora and the world of the gypsies Manrico and Azucena. These are
the three intonations, three colours, three images of Il trovatore. That is why
the central element of the scenery will be three towers, each with three sides.
They all are different, symbolizing the main characters’ worlds. The costumes
will be in line with the epoch.
When I work with singers, whether Italian or international, I
do not just tell them how they should move on stage; I devote much time to
achieving pronunciation clarity and understanding the gist of the story, as I
believe that the integrity of a stage image, the facial and body mobility of a
character depend on the speech, understanding and appropriation of both the
musical and the literary text of an opera”.
Enrico Caruso and Ernestine Schumann-Heink
(1913) Problems listening to this file? See media help. Manrico and
Azucena are awaiting their execution. Manrico attempts to soothe Azucena, whose
mind wanders to happier days in the mountains (Duet: Ai nostri monti ritorneremo
/ "Again to our mountains we shall return"). At last the gypsy slumbers. Leonora
comes to Manrico and tells him that he is saved, begging him to escape. When he
discovers she cannot accompany him, he refuses to leave his prison. He believes
Leonora has betrayed him until he realizes that she has taken poison to remain
true to him. As she dies in agony in Manrico's arms she confesses that she
prefers to die with him than to marry another (Quartet: Prima che d'altri vivere
/ "Rather than live as another's"). The count has heard Leonora's last words and
orders Manrico's execution. Azucena awakes and tries to stop Di Luna. Once
Manrico is dead, she cries: Egli era tuo fratello! Sei vendicata, o madre. / "He
was your brother... You are avenged, oh mother!". Cultural references
Enrico Caruso once said that all it takes for successful performance of Il
trovatore is the four greatest singers in the world. On many different
occasions, this opera and its music have been featured in various forms of
popular culture and entertainment. Scenes of comic chaos play out over a
performance of Il trovatore in the Marx Brothers's film, A Night at the
Opera.Luchino Visconti used a performance of Il trovatore at La Fenice opera
house for the opening sequence of his 1954 film Senso. As Manrico sings his
battle cry in "Di quella pira", the performance is interrupted by the answering
cries of Italian nationalists in the audience. In Italian Film in the Light of
Neorealism, Millicent Marcus proposes that Visconti used this operatic paradigm
throughout Senso, with parallels between the opera's protagonists, Manrico and
Leonora, and the film's protagonists, Ussoni and Livia.
Il Trovatore - G.Verdi (Opera in two acts) - Novaya Opera
About This Video
01:33
Il trovatore, composed by Giuseppe Verdi in 1853, is one of his most popular operas. It is a romantic drama with an intricate plot and deathly mysteries, passions of love and fierce duels, vengeance and a tragic denouement.
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