In March 1851, while still in Venice for the success of Rigoletto, Giuseppe Verdi suggested a new opera project to the poet Salvadore Cammarano, a trusted collaborator of the previous Alzira, Battaglia di Legnano and Luisa Miller. The proposed source is Antonio Garcia Gutierrez's El Trovator, a romantic drama performed in Madrid in 1836 and never translated into Italian until then. Despite the enthusiasm of the Maestro, the works are slow, perhaps due to a lack of sharing of the subject by Cammarano. To complicate the situation the sudden and unexpected death of the librettist, in July 1852 with the libretto almost completed, which forced Verdi to ask for the intervention of Leone Emanuele Bardare to retouch some parts of the drama. As already experienced in Rigoletto, also in Trovatore the composer focuses on an unconventional character: the gypsy Azucena, the undisputed protagonist of the opera. Dominated by conflicting passions - the thirst for revenge for the atrocious death of her mother, who was burned alive on a charge of witchcraft, and the love for her adopted son Manrico - Azucena requires a dramatic voice capable of defining the character's dark character, continuously poised between hallucinations and explosions full of pathos. Represented for the first time on January 19, 1853 at the Apollo Theater in Rome, Il Trovatore, for the happiness of melodic inventions, the passionate lyricism and the engaging orchestration, always careful to emphasize the characters of the four protagonists, soon became the most loved opera in Verdi's time.

Staged by Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

Pictures - October 2022

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