In we go, through the gaping jaws of hell into an apocalypse of eternal damnation straight out of medieval imagery. Nothing is comfortable in the Royal Opera’s staging of Il Trovatore. That front curtain hell-mouth acts as a grim, faintly comic warning: Adele Thomas’s 2023 production, back for the first time (revival director Simon Iorio), exposes Verdi’s 1853 opera in all its anarchy. Naturalism, doubtful anyway with a plot that includes sinister curses and a mother mistakenly throwing her baby on the fire, is out. Beneath the convention of set-piece choruses and magnificent coloratura arias, transgression holds sway. In Annemarie Woods’s designs, the 15th-century Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch provides a touchstone. No surprise to see humans in animal skulls, cavorting and thwacking to that famous, harmonically slithering melody we call the Anvil chorus (Coro di Zingari). Horned goblins pop through trap doors, squirming up and down the stairs, which, fixed within three large frames, fill an otherwise empty stage. Chorus and cast (choreography by Emma Woods) must deliver every detail of the story in sharp focus.
On first night, momentum was elusive initially, the conductor Giacomo Sagripanti pausing for applause that might not automatically have come, and with some dropped stitches in ensemble between stage and pit. Once Agnieszka Rehlis appeared, as the vengeful Azucena, the pace quickened, uncertainty receded. The Polish mezzo soprano, fearless in urgency and despair, held histrionics in tight rein (a contrast to Jamie Barton’s no-holds-barred Azucena in 2023, equally compelling but different). As Count di Luna, the Russian baritone Aleksei Isaev, sometimes overshadowed in ensembles, shone in his big aria “Il balen”, in which Luna’s thwarted love for the noble Leonora shows Verdi at his most compassionate. The American soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen was rich-toned and assured in negotiating the taxing range, vocally and emotionally, of Leonora, in love with the troubadour-rebel of the title, Manrico. The star American tenor Michael Fabiano excels in this Italian repertoire, silky toned and ardent. Manrico’s battle cry aria “Di quella pira”, full of high-note risk, had exciting, pulsating energy, in the orchestra, too. His final duet with Azucena was lyrical and intense. This is brave and powerful theatre, easy neither for performers or audience. It leaves you rattled: surely what Verdi wanted.
