The twisted ‘Trovatore’

Fitzcarraldo is a name that one is not likely to forget. The man who carried that name inspired the motion picture by Werner Herzog which was the entry of Germany to the Manila International Film Festival in the early1980s.

Opera-buff, lunatic, dreamer, Fitzcarraldo invited the legendary tenor, Caruso, and an entire opera company to perform before an audience of headhunters deep in the Amazon wilderness of Brazil. To finance his mission, he had to exhaust the resources of his rubber plantation. He had to hire an entire village to haul a 328-ton steamboat inch by painful inch over a mountain from a good river to the navigable part of a bad one. And all these, this madman accomplished to "soothe the savage breast" of the Jivaro Indians with the magic of operatic music.

One cannot fail to notice how much madness there is in the world of opera. A short tenor with a fat belly playing a Greek or Nordic god, an obese soprano playing a courtesan wasting away from consumption, a heroine driven mad by despair and singing the most elaborate coloratura aria – all these and more which defy credibility are staples of grand opera. But what does the opera buff care if the short tenor with the fat belly is a Caruso, the obese tubercular is a Caballe, the insane coloratura soprano, a Callas? Great artists can make the unbelievable believable. All these thoughts have been stirred in the mind of a schoolteacher moonlighting as a critic who needs to write about the production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore at the CCP Main Theater. He too, is moonstruck: he will stoop to vending Balcony 1 tickets to his students because he wants them to fall under the spell of opera.

Because he wants his classes to know the story before they watch the opera, he supplies them with the synopsis. He is somewhat apologetic because Salvatore Cammarano’s libretto is marred by lack of clarity and conviction.

The plot is set in Aragon and Biscay in the late Middle Ages.

Azucena, a gypsy whose mother had been burned at the stake for witchcraft by the Conte di Luna, had kidnapped his son. She had intended to burn the child to avenge her mother, but in her state of confusion had thrown her own infant son instead into the fire.

The province of Aragon, of which the Governor is the other son of the Count, is torn by civil strife. The insurgents are led by the troubadour Manrico, a chieftain under the Prince of Biscay. He has been raised by Azucena as her own son. Now, he has fallen in love with Leonora, a lady-in-waiting in the Court of Aragon.

The Count challenges Manrico to a duel when he catches the lovers in an assignation. The troubadour flees to the mountains and finds his "mother" among a band of gypsies. She raves about the horrors of the past which continue to haunt her mind.

When reports reach Leonora that her suitor has been killed, she decides to enter the nunnery. The Count plots to carry her off but Manrico and his followers suddenly arrive and rescue her from her captors.

The lovers fly to the Castle of Castellor which is under siege by the government troops. Azucena attempts to penetrate enemy lines to steal into the castle but she is discovered and condemned to be burned at the stake.

Manrico’s attempt to rescue her fails and he falls into the hands of the Count’s men. Leonora offers her hand to the Count in return for her lover’s freedom. However, she has taken a slow-acting poison and the Count, realizing that he has been duped, orders Manrico’s instant execution. He drags Azucena to the window to watch her son die but she turns the cards on him and she shrieks in his face that it is his long-lost brother he has ordered put to death. The gypsy has exacted her vengeance.

Sad to say, the students do not get to see this Il Trovatore. The opera presented by Singapore Lyric Opera, the Opera Guild Foundation of the Philippines, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and the Cultural Center of the Philippines is a bowdlerized account of Verdi. The producers seem to have been bewitched by the spell of opera, for what alchemy or madness has made them transmute pure gold into base metal?

The purist has reason enough to denounce this travesty: the universality of art speaks a common language to all nations. To change the setting from 15th century Aragon and Biscay in Spain to Intramuros and Cavite at the time of the Philippine Revolution is not a stroke of genius, but an unnecessary application of poetic license. To transform the gypsies into General Emilio Aguinaldo’s Katipuneros is not a stroke of brilliance but only a misguided sense of nationalism. If there is an attempt to inject realism into the production, the effect is ironic because it sinks the work into the mire of the absurd. What realism is there in Filipino insurgents singing in Cammanaro’s Italian?

All of these indictments do not mean that this Il Trovatore is without redeeming values because it definitely has. Unfortunately one of these is not tenor Stefano Costa, who takes the title role with the same passion that he would squeeze an annoying pimple. His delivery of the cabaletta, Di quella pira with its ringing high Cs, is as limp as an old man’s lingam.

As Fernando, bass Mario Bertolino delivers a credible account of the burning of a witch at the stake in the opera’s opening aria. Dublin-born baritone Mario di Marco makes a powerful Conte di Luna with a vocal instrument that can shake the rafters.

Soprano Christina Lamberti sings her Leonora with touching tenderness. Her Tacea la notte placida is utterly ravishing. Chinese mezzo-soprano Yang Jie does no less as Azucena; her Stride la vampa is as blood-curdling as it can get.

The Filipino talents, soprano Rachel Gerodias as Inez and tenor Lemuel Dela Cruz as Ruiz hold their own against the principal singers. The chorus delivers a stirring "Anvil Chorus" and its Miserere absolutely unearthly.

Maestro Ruggero Barbieri and the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra provide ample support.

What do students think about their first opera? Their reactions range from "Okay lang" to "Super!"

It was just too bad that this Il Trovatore could not be far better. The people responsible for messing it up ought to be burned at the stake!

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