I went to Il Trovatore at the Metropolitan Opera last night. I wanted to hear Marcelo Alvarez in person. I don’t think anybody singing today could
do better than Marcelo Alvarez (Manrico) or Sondra Radanovsky (Leonora) in this opera.
Hvorostovsky was good, but I don’t think the Count di Luna is an ideal role for him.
People often call Dolora Zajick (Azucena) a force of nature. I don’t quite get
her myself. Yes, she is loud enough and she hits the notes. That’s
not nothing, of course. But ultimately so what? I could make out the
words she sang sometimes, but 90% of the time I wouldn’t know what
language she was singing or even that she was singing any language. Maybe “force of nature” means she sounds like the wind. I
like to hear the words. Marcelo Alvarez, for one, enunciates the words very
clearly.
The sets were drab. The lazy susan for the sets was noisy. The
19th-century costumes (the time was updated somewhat) are not bad as clothing, but the characters
really don’t seem like 19th-century people and the story does not seem
like something taking pace in the 19th-century. The opera does not
need any connection to Goya. The crowd scenes were well
staged. I’ve never in my life had a conversation with somebody who
was rolling around on the ground, and so I don’t know why Leonora had
to lie down on the ground in act one while conversing with her
companion. Such a tired old gimmick.
But on the whole the performance was very enjoyable. The audience was well-behaved. They seemed to be giving the opera their rapt attention at all times. They especially liked Sondra Radanovsky. (I don’t know why the Met doesn’t do more with her.) More of a typical opera audience than the audience for Doctor Atomic, the last opera I saw at the Met. Nobody looked very hip. But there was full range of ages from teen-agers to the very old.
