Winning way

Two of the most popular operas in the repertoire, works which I adore, but which I’m almost always disappointed by productions of; yet on two consecutive evenings in the Wales Millennium Centre I gained intense pleasure from each of them.

Two of the most popular operas in the repertoire, works which I adore, but which I’m almost always disappointed by productions of; yet on two consecutive evenings in the Wales Millennium Centre I gained intense pleasure from each of them. What went right?

Both Il Trovatore and Die Fledermaus are works of overflowing tunefulness, with almost inscrutable plots. The first duty of the producer — once it was considered to be his only duty — is to ensure that the audience is fully involved in the action, which it can only be if it’s clear what the action is; and thus that for all the abundance of familiar melodies these pieces aren’t treated as costume concerts.

The producer of Trovatore, Peter Watson, in close collaboration with the designer Tim Hatley, not only elucidates the drama of the opera, but also enables the excellent team of singers to make all those famous arias into expressions of the characters’ passions, something which I have only otherwise experienced with this work when listening to it on one of its great recordings. The sets are stark, with immense walls and columns and very little else, except where the odd prop is called for. The lighting, appropriately gloomy, and the generalised ‘Renaissance’ costumes do all that’s necessary to enable the singers to confront one another or retreat into anguished soliloquy.

The result is that Trovatore, which I suspect even confirmed Verdians tend to patronise, is shown to be every bit as sombre and powerful and serious as Simon Boccanegra, currently a somewhat overestimated opera, but with much fresher inspiration.