From Seen and Heard International
By: Bernard Jacobson

Seattle Opera, soloists, cond. Yves Abel, dir. José Maria Condemi, set designer Allen Moyer, costume designer John Conklin, lighting designer Thomas Hase, Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, Seattle, 16 and 24.1.2010 (BJ)

Music trumped drama in Seattle Opera’s new Trovatore, partly because vocal and orchestral values were so strong, but partly also on account of some idiosyncracies in the staging.

Let me first discuss those strengths. In the customary Seattle set-up of double casts, the eight singers in the four principal roles were for the most part immensely impressive. On opening night, Lisa Daltirus’s Leonora and Antonello Palombi’s Manrico made a compelling pair of lovers. Daltirus is a riveting actress, and aside from one or two moments of questionable intonation she sang superbly, with especially impressive pianissimos in the highest register. Palombi has one of the most easeful and luxuriant tenor voices I have heard lately, though above the stave it becomes a trifle pinched. It was a pity that at the end of an otherwise thrilling Di quella pira he did not heed Verdi’s comment, “If they’re going to add a C, let it be a good C.” His interpolated high note reminded me of George Bernard Shaw’s description of the famous 19th-century tenor Tamberlik as “a mere creaking wreck, whose boasted ut de poitrine [C from the chest] was an eldritch screech which might just as well have been aimed an octave higher.” In the second cast, Anthony Rawls committed the same sin, and I found his voice somewhat lacking in richness and timbral variety in comparison with Palombi’s, while Mary Elizabeth Williams displayed impressive vocal resources, without quite matching Daltirus’s vocal and dramatic intensity.

As Count di Luna in the first cast Gordon Hawkins, whose baritone I have in the past described as ‘honeyed,” was as fluent as ever, crafting an Il balen of telling nuances, with superbly controlled dynamics on the last note. His counterpart in the second cast was Todd Thomas, an equally accomplished performer: his tone is perhaps more cleanly focused, and he was even more convincing in delineating the inner torments of this basically unsavory character. It was in the role of Azucena that the biggest disparity between the two performers made itself felt. After her stunning Judith in last season’s Bluebeard’s Castle, Malgorzata Walewska’s Azucena came as something of a disappointment, fluently sung, but without the element of mezzo- or even alto-ish darkness that is surely essential to the part. Mary Phillips was much more convincing in sound, and surprisingly also in dramatic terms.

At both the performances I witnessed, Vira Slywotzky and Leodigario del Rosario offered strong portrayals of Inez and Ruiz, and Arthur Woodley’s Ferrando was exemplary both in vocal command and acting skills. What with excellent orchestral playing under Yves Abel’s baton, and the customarily powerful contribution from Beth Kirchhoff’s chorus, what we heard would have added up to a totally convincing Trovatore had it not been for some oddities in what we were given to look at.

The Minnesota Opera’s sets, designed by Allen Moyer, offered fragments of some antique-looking buildings, sitting at precarious angles. This would have been acceptable enough, but certain touches of whimsy seemed to me regrettable. It’s fair enough to put a big disc of light on the backdrop to represent the moon. But when a brightly illuminated cross then appeared next to it in the sky, the effect was a tad ridiculous, evoking the image of a rudimentary sketch for a game of noughts and crosses (“tic-tac-toe” to American readers).

To be more serious, though, it was director José Maria Condemi’s marshaling of characters on stage that I found the most puzzling. In their Part 1 scena, Leonora and Inez conducted their intimate conversation between one end of the stage and the back of the other. When Azucena, in Part 3, railed against the wickedness of her tormentors, I am not sure whom to blame for Ms. Malgorzata’s addressing her words not to di Luna but directly to Ferrando, because Ms. Phillips, when her turn came, correctly remembered who it was she was speaking to. And yes, di Luna is certainly a bad guy, but I can find no warrant in the score or the stage directions for Condemi’s notion of bringing him on stage one scene early in Part 3 to be portrayed as a sort of catatonic drunkard.

There were, to be sure, elements in Condemi’s staging that were simple and strong. John Conklin’s costumes were unobtrusively appropriate. I particularly enjoyed the enlivening of the first scene in Part 3 with deft swordplay, executed by four chorus members skillfully directed by Geoffrey Alm and Matthew Orme. If everything had been as straightforward and effective as this, I could have called the production a Trovatore of the highest class. And even with those perverse moments, the acting of all the principals–and on opening night the sheer dramatic and vocal allure, above all, of Lisa Daltirus and Antonello Palombi–carried sufficient conviction to overturn any misgivings pedants may have about the stature of an opera that is not Verdi’s most subtle, but is among his most gut-wrenchingly human.