The Il Trovatore problem is easily summarised. Brilliant musical craftsmanship, some great singing roles, and an absurd, wild and cruel story – populated with (mostly) dull characters who make the whole drama hard to watch without a certain growing indifference.
Still, one takes one’s seat at Il Trovatore with an open mind and aware that Verdi, then at the height of his creative energy after the triumph of Rigoletto, was keen to write it. There is not a dull page of music to come. But it is pointless to deny that the opera George Bernard Shaw unfairly dismissed as “absolutely void of intellectual interest” is a distinctly odd experience.
