I have thought of a way of not repeating myself on writing about today’s performance of Verdi’s Il Trovatore in the Paris Opera, but I can’t. So, in a nutshell: although it’s considered an opera where only the singers matter, I disagree. It is an opera about raw passion and it requires an orchestra and a conductor capable of delivering the punch in the stomach. You’ll ask me: if you keep on with the rant, isn’t it high time you realize you’re talking of something that does not exist? The first time I bothered to really listen to Il Trovatore, a friend made me listen Herbert von Karajan’s recording with the Berlin Philharmonic pouring volcanic sounds and producing Musikdrama with a capital M. Although I have never heard live something really like that, both in Berlin and in Salzburg I’ve had the opportunity to witness hell going loose in the pit during performances of this work and all I can tell is: once you’ve been there, you never go back.
That is why I can’t really say I was disappointed by the bloodless pageant offered by the Opéra de Paris this afternoon. Maestro Carlo Rizzi conducted this polite divertissement around a baby burnt to death with an orchestra that seemed to be playing from the Palais Garnier while the singers at the Bastille were left to fend for themselves in terms of producing any excitement.
Anna Pirozzi’s naturalness of tone and feeling for the style are hard to resist. At moments, in the middle register up to a high g or a she even made me think of Montserrat Caballé in her tasteful use of portamento and roundness of tone. Yet Leonora is a role that requires a freedom in the upper register this valuable Italian soprano doesn’t truly possess at this point. Her high notes have hardened and she worked hard for mezza voce and often gave up. After an unsubtle D’amor sul’ali rosee she seemed to reach her optimal level and sang an urgent, firm-toned Miserere, a rich-sounding duet with the baritone and a touching death scene. Judit Kutasi obviously knows the requirements of the part of Azucena and goes for it with all she’s got – but what she’s got is soprano-ish in sound, light in tone and not earth-shattering as it has to be. This is the central role of the opera – the mezzo soprano must really blow you away from your seat with dramatic top notes, formidable chesty low register and the kind of declamation in which you hear every consonant. Anything else is just not acceptable. Ms. Kutasi is evidently a committed singer and actress and I hope to see her in any other role in the future, but this is the deep end of the swimming pool.
Yusif Eyvazov is everything but appealing to the ears – it is rather nasal in the lower and middle register and rather glaring too – and his singing is emphatic in a way that every syllable is stressed and glottal release abounds. Yet he really really likes to sing Di quella pira and offers more notes written by Verdi than anyone in a long while. So, yes, the aria was sung with such panache that one has to recognize that he truly embodied the gutsy spirit of this score at that moment. Étienne Dupuis is a technical immaculate singer with a beautiful voice. My old school friends would say that he sounds less dark than a couple of Italian tenors, and it would be hard to dispute that. Yet he sang richly and with feeling for the style. He sounded too much like the good guy compared to Eyvazov’s ear-unfriendly tone and not truly refined ways, but again: he sang really well. Finally Roberto Tagliavini was a velvety-toned, characterful Ferrando. Among the small roles, Samy Camps (Ruiz) stood out with a tenor of unusual tonal warmth. Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesueur too was classier than usual as Ines.
Alex Ollé’s production involves a single set, transformed for every scene by concrete-like slabs inspired by Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Although there is no direct reference, the opera is staged in a WW2-ish setting, everybody carrying guns and lots of people being executed. Although it is effective enough, it fails somehow to provide something really exciting. The whole stage machinery is too complex, slabs being suspended and brought down by cables and everywhere. I imagine that everyone on stage was at some point busy trying not to bump into anything – and there’s a price in terms of naturalness in sets like these in the context of an operatic performance.
I HEAR VOICES 
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