Not Only Opera

Worra lorra Trovatore: Il trovatore at the ROH

Il trovatore
The Royal Opera
Royal Opera House
27 January 2017
Balcony standing D32, £13

Last night the Royal Opera launched its third revival of Il trovatore since the production's premiere in July last year. Four casts (or at least 3.5) within six months is a lot of Trovatore whichever way you look at it and perhaps inevitably some aspects have become rather stale for this last hurrah. It's a shame, I think – David Bösch's production is mostly serviceable and at times highly atmospheric, and is sensitively revived this season by Julia Burbach. Its effectiveness is vulnerable to the stage errors we saw last night, presumably the result of minimal rehearsal period, and well below the ROH's usual standard: ripples in the back scrim, a stray tormentor dragged to the middle of the stage and a noisily creaky final pyre undermined the performance.

The usually excellent orchestra of the ROH also seemed somewhat underwhelmed, playing with the sort of resignation which I've never found to effect their account of, say, the umpteenth performance of The Nutcracker but which subdued Verdi's fiery melodrama. Richard Farnes, returning from the December revival, took some occasionally optimistic tempos and at times struggled to keep orchestra and singers on the same page.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the evening a lot: you can't complain too much when you have a fantastic score, an occasionally effective production, a good orchestra and a cast that sometimes touches on excellent. The opera's heroines were the undeniable victors, certainly in the opera's second half. I was maybe looking forwards to Anita Rachvelishvili too much – I was wowed and wowed by her Carmen at the ROH in 2015. For Azucena her voice seems to lie a little too high, with a (well-managed but still audible) break in her voice towards the end of her Act I confession breaking the magic slightly, which was very much not the case with the wonderful Ekaterina Semenchuk in the summer. Still, Rachvelishvili has the decibels and then some, a sound that becomes more glorious through the evening and suitably wild-eyed acting that builds to the intense, short final climax.*

I first saw Lianna Haroutounian in the ROH's Vêpres sicliennes back in 2013 and she impressed me then with her glorious top notes , which thrill with the metal of a truly great voice. That's still the case, and she really nailed a lot of Leonora's ridiculously difficult music. What slightly puts me off is that she tends to wear an expression of smiling serenity regardless of what's happening, which makes bizarre characters such as Leonora seem even weirder – but Haroutounian moved to another level in the second half of this performance, achieving a truly effecting Miserere. What a great piece.

I was less enamoured of the men. Vitaly Bilyy made his house debut stepping in for Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Those are big shoes to fill and for me Bilyy doesn't quite have the welly, struggling to make himself heard above the chorus and noticeably quieter than Alexander Tsymbalyuk as Ferrando. That said, he has an imposing stage presence and good acting sense, and at quieter times was able to bring a colouring of bitterness into his voice that I think is highly effective for Luna. And last of all there's Gregory Kunde. On just the basis of the offstage serenade in Act I you'd say Kunde had a truly wonderful voice, a proper tenorial sound – this is the Kunde of old. But as the evening wears on he became tireder and tireder, all the notes still impressively there but I have to say with a somewhat leathery sound. It's not an ideal sound for the young troubadour hero, and he's not helped by the mullet and the leather jacket he's saddled with in the costume design.

* I saw the production again on Monday 6 February (Amphitheatre A 74, staff comp) and Rachvelishvili was phenomenal. I don't know if she was not in full health for the first night or if I was just unlucky with the acoustics of my seat, but on Monday she was essentially superhuman. Amazing stuff.