A night at the opera: discovering "Il Trovatore" by Giuseppe Verdi - Episode 4: How the story ends

The story so far: Manrico is in love with Leonora, but the Count of Luna, who is in an enemy to Manrico in the civil war, loves her too. Believing that Manrico is dead, Leonora has decided to become a nun and Manrico is going to rescue her. But he does not know that the Count of Luna has had the same idea and now is in Castellor, where the ceremony during which Leonora will become a nun will take place, and he wants to rescue her too!

As you can see, new fights are going to take place and again the swords will cross. The opera will end as it began, with love, blood and mystery. But let's start from the beginning...

The Count of Luna is now in Castellor, looking for Leonora. He believes Manrico is dead and thinks that now noone could stop him from being engaged with Leonora...

...and he decides to stop and tell us in a wonderful aria that he loves Leonora very much...

...and that noone, "not even a God", can steal Leonora from him:

This seems to me a little bit what you can see in every Disney movie, when the bad guy is sure that he will win and so he says to everyone: "You know, I'm the smartest and most beautiful man on earth, that's why I've won and my rival has lost", but then the hero arrives and he loses everything. Well, this is exactly what happens in this scene, because, after this I-won-and-Manrico-lost aria by the Count of Luna, Manrico arrives and rescues Leonora while she's going to the church where, if he hadn't come, she would have become a nun.

The only thing the Count of Luna can do is what he always do: get angry and shout against Manrico: "Hey, everyone said you were dead, so why are you here?" 

Leonora, for her part, didn't  like very much the idea of being rescued by the Count of Luna, so she's very happy when Manrico arrives. Thus the second part ends and, when the curtain closes, on scene there is a very angry Count, a very happy Manrico who's going away with Leonora and a very funny fight bethween the supporters of the two men, as we can see in the following video:

Part 3: Il figlio della zingara

But the Count won't have to wait long to have his revenge: in fact, when he returns to his encampment (and he is very angry, as you can imagine), he finds out that his soldiers have arrested a gipsy woman who was wandering near to the camp and who is thought to be a spy. Can you guess who she is? Of course, she's Azucena, and she's immediately recognized by Ferrando, who, as you should remember, said in the first Part that he could recognize the daughter of the woman who was burnt at stake even though many years had passed.

When Azucena understands she has been recognized, she has a wonderful idea: she tells everyone she's Manrico's mother. So, she makes the Count very happy: he condemns her to be burnt at stake, so he can achieve two goals:

1) He can take his revenge on the woman who, he thinks, killed his brother

2) He can take his revenge on Manrico who stole Leonora from him

The news arrives to Manrico, who has just promised eternal love to Leonora, and he has to go and rescue his mother...

...but, before doing that, he sings one of the most famous opera arias of all time: the very well known cabaletta Di quella pira:

Which, you'll agree with me, is a wonderful tune to sing under the shower...

To arms! To arms!

...and which has always been controversial because of its High Cs from the chest. The reason of the controversy is easy to understand if you remember what we said about the Solita forma (if you don't, you can go and see here): in the Solita Forma, the Cabaletta was repeated twice and during the second repetition the singer could change the music by inserting High Cs or grace notes in order to show his vocal ability. And so should singers do in Di quella pira, being Di quella pira a Cabaletta.

But...

But singers made a strange thing, in 1800s: they didn't sing the aria twice, they sang it only once, but they put in it many High Cs and grace notes. And this was the version of this aria which became famous worldwide (for instance, this one-repetition-with-High-Cs version is the version you've heard in the video above, where it is sung by the famous italian singer Mario Del Monaco) and this is a problem, because performing this aria with only one repetition and with High Cs does not mean only doing something which is not what Verdi wanted, but it also implies that the singers and the orchestra don't play all the music there is between the first and the second repetition (because actually there is music between the first and the second repetition, there is a short piece sung by Leonora, as you will hear).

Today, after many critics and conductors, among whom the famous Italian conductor Riccardo Muti, deeply criticized this way of performing Di quella pira, the original version of the aria is performed: the aria is repeated twice and there still are the High Cs from the chest, which are the part of Di quella pira audiences of all the world want to hear in order to judge singer's ability, but singers perform it in the second repetition of the cabaletta.

The "modern" version of Di quella pira sounds like this:

Please appreciate the Eighties Heavy Metal singer dress which Bonisolli wears there. It is quite horrible, isn't it? It makes him look like the singer of Europe, Motley Crue or of any Eighties hair metal group you can think of.

Well, this was the end of Part 3 of Il Trovatore, which was called Il figlio della zingara, the son of the gipsy woman. We're ready now to know how the story ends in Part 4, which is called Il supplizio, "The execution". Any ideas on how the story will end?

Part 4: il supplizio

Manrico fails to rescue his mother and is imprisoned and condemned to death. Leonora tries to save him by promising to marry the Count of Luna...

...but then she kills herself and the Count of Luna gets angry (for the tenth time in the opera) and execute Manrico.

Azucena dies too but, before doing that, she reveals to the Count of Luna that Manrico, who has just died, was his brother and, while she's lead to the place where she will be executed, she cries: "You had your revenge, mother!" That's a good way of taking one's revenge: you make your own son be killed and after he's dead you reveal that he was the brother of the man who killed him. Really well done, Azucena, you're really a genius. Maybe if you had said that a little bit earlier, Manrico could have been saved. But, you know, that's what we said when we talked about Azucena's omission: she has an inner conflict between her love for Manrico and her desire of revenge and at last her desire of revenge wins by making her "forget" to tell everyone in time the truth about Manrico's identity.

I know, the last act of Il Trovatore is a little bit sad: everyone dies, noone is happy (apart from Azucena), everything is destroyed in a second. Well, get used to this, because this is the standard end of Italian non-comic operas: death, sadness, death, sadness and so on. Well, in Il Trovatore we probably have more death and more sadness than in standard operas and that's why many critics said Il Trovatore is the Verdian opera where we can find less hope and more despair. A nihilist opera, if we can say that, and this vision on this opera can be supported by Verdi's own words.

In fact, after the opera was first represented, in 1853, many people said it was too sad and Verdi, in a letter he wrote on the 20th of January (ten days after the first representation of Il Trovatore) to his friend Clara Maffei, tried to explain why he wrote such a sad opera:

Dicono che quest’Opera sia troppo triste e che vi sieno troppe morti ma infine nella vita tutto è morte! Cosa esiste?

They say that this Opera is too sad and that there are too many deaths in it but, at last, in life everything is death! What exists?

(taken from G.Verdi's Lettere, Einaudi, 2012)

So, there is not casual that there are so many deaths in Il Trovatore: they reflect the view of a composer who thought that, at last, everything in life had to come to an end, had to die. Il Trovatore is, at last, an opera about three characters (the Count of Luna, Leonora, Manrico) who deceive themselves, who try to think that the idea that nothing but death exists is not true, who try to believe in love, in politics, but at last are all defeated. Il Trovatore is the story of the end of an illusion and that's why it is a sad story.

One interesting feature in the end of Il Trovatore is the theme of fate: in fact, both Manrico and the Count of Luna are victims of the events which happened when they were very young. Manrico does not die in a duel for Leonora's love, he dies while trying to save his mother that the Count of Luna has condemned to death because of that ancient story and who does not save him by telling everyone the truth because she wants revenge for what happened in that far past. So, the past, as a curse, comes and decides the destiny of the characters. It is something similar to the curse in Rigoletto, if you think about that.

I know, you're all sad right now. Well, luckily, Il Trovatore's Part 4 features one of the most beautiful musical pieces of the opera. And so, we can listen to the music and forget about the sad end of the opera. This is the Miserere:

This Miserere, which you've probably already heard in Marx Brothers' movie A night at the opera and if you haven't you can do this right now by watching the video below (I know, it is in Spanish, I couldn't find on YouTube this scene in English, sorry about that)...

...is very interesting not only because it is wonderful, but also because it tells us something about the way Verdi uses the Solita Forma. In fact, the Miserere is only the Tempo di Mezzo of an Aria whose Cantabile is D'amor sull'ali rosee, which you can hear it in the first half of the first video below, then in the second half you have the Miserere:



This says much about how Verdi used Solita forma: he kept its structure, but he put music where there wasn't and he put theatrical action where it lacked. Recitatives in Donizetti and Bellini operas were musically boring: Verdi filled recitatives with music and often used them to create monologues. We will see it in Rigoletto: during recitatives, the main character thinks, talks and the music follows his thoughts and changes as his thoughts change.

In Tempo di mezzo lacked theatrical action: what happened during it was often very, very simple (a letter arrived, the main character knew that someone wanted to kill him and so on). Verdi used it to make characters interact in ways which were different from traditional duets, quartets and so on (where characters had to sing together at the same time) and from traditional Tempo d'attacco (where characters had to talk between themselves). See for instance the Miserere we've just heard: we have Manrico and Leonora together on stage and they're both singing but

1) They're not singing the same thing at the same moment as in duets
2) They're not talking between themselves as in Tempo d'attacco

Then we have a choir and it sings together with the two characters (it is a choir of people asking God to forgive the souls of the condemned to death), which would have been impossible in a traditional duet or in a Tempo d'attacco.

The effect, both from a musical and a theatrical point of view, is wonderful: the bell tolls and the choir sings its sad prayer, so Leonora expresses the fear which that choir gives to her. Manrico, as Leonora, has heard the choir and he, as Leonora, has a reaction to that: he says that he wants to die and he bids Leonora farewell. The voice of Manrico is heard by Leonora and she says she could faint.

As you can see, there is a very particular interaction among the characters on scene (Manrico, Leonora, the choir) which is very different from the one you can see in a duet and which has a very moving effect on the audience, in particular in the end of the scene, when Manrico says: "Leonora, farewell, don't forget me" and Leonora answers (but Manrico cannot hear her): "I won't".

And on this poetic image of the last farewell of the two lovers our final episode of this series of A night at the opera posts on Il Trovatore ends. But don't be sad: we will talk about other operas and we will talk again soon about Il Trovatore because we'll discover La Vera Storia, an opera which Berio and Calvino wrote trying to make a "modern version" of Il Trovatore.

Stay tuned!

A night at the opera: discovering "Il Trovatore" by Giuseppe Verdi - Episode 3: Gipsies and Nuns

I was busy last week and couldn't go on with our travel through one of Verdi's masterpieces: Il Trovatore. Sorry for that, we'll do that now and we'll discover the second act of the opera, which is called La gitana, "the gipsy woman". But before the curtain opens, you have to know something...

In fact, many things have happened since the end of act 1. The Count of Luna lost his duel with Manrico, but Manrico did not kill him, we'll see later why. Some time later, Manrico was caught in an ambush by the Count of Luna and fell wounded to the ground. Everyone thought he was dead (and the news of his death spread throughout Spain)...

...and Azucena and Leonora both had the bad news and reacted in a very different way:

Ok, don't ask me why exactly Leonora makes this decision; it doesn't make much sense, does it? "Oh, the man I saw three times and that I could not even recognize when I met him has just died... I am so sad right now and I don't want to be engaged with any other man. Let me think... yes! I will become a nun!" That's Opera logic, you will learn to understand it; it is simple, there are only two points you should always remember:

1) In Opera there are no quick ones: love lasts always forever. Even if two people have met only once, even if they don't even know their names, even if one of them does something terrible, you can bet it: they will remain in love for the rest of the opera

2) In Opera, blood is needed, so, if you're an opera character and you have a little row with someone else, you should take your sword and make a duel with him. The result of the duel will depend on the role you have in the opera: if you're the main character, you will die (and your girlfriend, who still loves you even though you accused her of being a liar and tried to kill her, will cry for you - see point 1 for more informations), if you're the bad guy, you'll win.

So, I imagine that the decision about the Leonora-wants-to-be-a-nun thing in Il Trovatore came out like this:

Ok, ok, I know, I have to be serious: well, the nun thing was already in the source for Il Trovatore, which is Antonio García Gutiérrez's El Trovador. So, Verdi simply put in music what was already in Gutiérrez opera. But I love to imagine that things went as I shown you in the image above.

But let's mind Leonora for a moment and let's focus on Azucena: she goes and looks for Manrico and she manages to find him but...

...suprise! He's not dead, he's still alive! So, she takes him in the gipsy village in the Basque Country where she lives and cures him. And it's only after all that that the curtain opens and that act II begins...

Part 2: The gipsy - Azucena's tale

We have already said that in Il Trovatore acts are called "Parts" and each part has its own name. So, welcome to Part II, which, as you know, is called La gitana.

When the curtain opens, we are in the small gipsy village in the Basque Country where Azucena took Manrico to cure him. It is early morning and the gipsies are singing while working and their happy song, Vedi le fosche notturne spoglie, is one of the most famous pieces in Il Trovatore. You probably already know it: it is the Anvil chorus, which is called like that because of the hammer-on-anvil sound Verdi put to accompany the gipsies' song.

So, try to imagine that: a peaceful village full of happy gipsies singing and striking on anvils with their hammers. Music is everywhere, all is peaceful and filled with joy. Who or what could ruin this peaceful scene?

Azucena.

Well, thing is that she decides this is the right moment to tell everyone about the death of her mother. Which, you'll agree with me, is not exactly a good subject to begin the day, given that Azucena's mother didn't die in her bed at the age of 113, but was burnt at stake. You'll learn to know Azucena, she's like that: she likes to ruin moments in which everyone is happy, you'll get used to that.

So, Azucena tells again the story Ferrando has already told us, but what is interesting is that Azucena tells the story from a perspective which is obviously different from Ferrando's one. In fact, Ferrando told us the story from the killers' point of view, Azucena now is telling it from the victim's point of view. This is what I call the narrative polyphony of Il Trovatore: we hear the same story, again and again, but it never is exactly the same story, because the character who's telling it is someone different, with a different view on that story, so he or she tells it in a different way.

As we'll see later, Luciano Berio, who was probably the main Italian composer in the second half of XX century, thought that this polyphony of voices telling in different ways the same story was so important that, when he composed together with Italo Calvino (probably the main Italian writer in the second half of XX century) his reinterpretation of Il Trovatore, La Vera Storia ("The true story"), he created a two-act opera in which each of the two acts tells the same story, but the musical and theatrical language differ very much from one act to the other, as if the two acts were told by different narrators.

We're talking more about that later, now let's go on with the Part Two of Il Trovatore and let's listen to Azucena's story: here's Stride la vampa:

However, Azucena's tale is not important only because she shows us the story of her mother's death from a point of view which is different from Ferrando's one: it is important also because she tells us something that Ferrando didn't say and could not know. Which is, she never killed the Count of Luna's son, she mistook and killed her own son instead.

That's not a big surprise for you (you've already learnt that here) but it is for Manrico, who suddenly realizes that, if Azucena killed her only son, he cannot be Azucena's son. And so, he asks, who am I?

I know: you're expecting Azucena to tell him the truth. Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you but she does not do that and she won't until the very end of the story. The reason? You can imagine it: Azucena want Manrico to kill the Count of Luna as a revenge for the execution of her mother. And you'll agree with me that Manrico would not have a strong desire to kill the Count if he knew that he actually is his brother. So, Azucena knows she must never tell Manrico the truth and this omission, as we will see, will lead Manrico to death.

Many critics have been interested in this aspect of Azucena's figure: she loves Manrico as if she really were his mother (if she didn't, she would not have gone on the battlefield looking for him and she would not have cured him), but she also wants revenge and so plans to use this son/not son - as the Italian critic Fabrizio della Seta calls him - to get her revenge. At last, she'll have her revenge, but she'll have through Manrico's death.

Fabrizio della Seta wrote:

In Il Trovatore Azucena has an inner conflict between the duty of taking a revenge for the death of her mother and the love for the son-not son who has to be the victim of that revenge. [...] This situation is very similar to the one we can see in La Juive, but here the decision which resolves the conflict is not an act of fanatism but [...] an omission: Azucena's desire of revenge wins over her love for Manrico by making her "forget" to tell everyone in time Manrico's real identity.

(taken from F. Della Seta, Italia e Francia nell'Ottocento, EDT, 1993)

Just in case you're wondering: La Juive is an opera by Halévy in which the Jew Eleazar saves the little daughter of Count Brogni (who later will become Cardinal), calls her Rachel and grows her as if she were his own daughter. Can you find any similarities with Il Trovatore? Well, there's something more.

In fact, as in Il Trovatore, Rachel thinks Eleazar is her real father and, as in Il Trovatore, Eleazar never tells her her real identity. In the end of the opera, Eleazar and Rachel are both condemned to death and Eleazar could save her by telling everyone her real identity but he decides not to and lets her die when he hears some people screaming for Jews' blood (this is the "act of fanatism" Della Seta refers to). You can find more information on the plot of La Juive here.

So, Azucena does not tell Manrico who his real father is and she says to him: "Don't worry, you're my son."

Part 2: The gipsy - Manrico's tale

But now it is Manrico who has something to say. He has to tell Azucena why he did not kill the Count of Luna after the duel. She wants to know it: in fact, if Manrico had killed the Count she would have had her revenge, so why didn't he do it?

Well, Manrico's answer is quite strange. Let's listen to the aria in which he talks about the duel, then I'll translate to you what he said.

The explanation Manrico gives is not so clear: he says that before he could kill the Count two things happened:

1) He suddenly felt cold
2) A voice from the sky said: "Don't kill him"

Which, you'll admit, is a little bit strange and can be explained only in this way: Manrico somehow feels that there's something deeper than their rivalry which binds him to the Count of Luna. He has somehow understood the relationship he has with the Count,  but Azucena does not seem to care. She makes him promise that if he has again the opportunity he will kill the Count. Manrico promises and everything would end like this if a sudden news would not come: Leonora, believing that Manrico is dead, is going to become a nun.

So Manrico leaves to stop this from happening and the curtain goes down: it is the end of the first part of act II.

See you soon for the second part and for the end of this wonderful opera!

A night at the opera: discovering "Il Trovatore" by Giuseppe Verdi - Episode 2 - The first part: the duel

Hello and welcome back to A night at the Opera, the programme which explains you opera with images and words. In our latest episode, we spoke about the historical setting, the characters of Il Trovatore and about the never-seen-on-scene Azucena's mother's story which is, as you will know soon, fundamental to understand what happens in the opera.

Well, now let the opera begin and the curtain open: ladies and gentlemen, here's Il Trovatore by Giuseppe Verdi.

Part 1: The duel - Ferrando's tale

When the curtain opens, we're in the Aljaferia Palace in Zaragoza. Which is a very beautiful place, as you can see in the pictures below:

The Aljaferia Palace by day and by night

The palace was build by the Arabs in the IX century: in fact, as you know, since the VIII century to 1492, when the last Muslim bastion, Granada, fell,  the Arabs held a part of the Iberian Peninsula. In the beginning of the XI century, the Caliphate of Cordoba took up the biggest part of the Peninsula, as we can see in the picture,

The Iberic Peninsula in A.D. 1000

then the Christian kings of Iberian Peninsula managed, with the so-called Reconquista (which is the Spanish for "reconquest"), to conquer more and more lands belonging to the Arabs and at last the Arabs lost all their kingdoms in the Peninsula.

The "Reconquista" will end in 1492, with the fall of Granada, but already in the XII century the part of Iberian Peninsula which was controlled by the Arabs had significantly reduced

Zaragoza, too, was reconquered and after its reconquest the Aljaferia Palace was the residence of the king of Aragon and of his court and it still was in 1413, which is the year in which our story is set. In fact, Leonora, who is the Queen's companion, lives here and so does the Count of Luna, who backs the king the war against the Count of Urgell.

Inside the palace...

Well, in the beginning of the The duel, which is the name of the first act of Il Trovatore, the curtain opens on the entrance hall of the palace...

The entrance hall of Aljaferia Palace

...where Ferrando, which is the chief of the King's guard, tries to keep his soldiers awake (it is late night) by telling them the story of something happened a long long time ago...

What story is telling Ferrando? Well, he tells the story you already know, the story of Azucena's mother we talked about here. What is interesting is that he tells the story from his point of view, so, in his opinion, Azucena's mother was really a witch and Azucena's revenge was something cruel (well, we can agree at least with that). We'll see that later the same story will be retold by Azucena and, as you can imagine, her point of view will be completely opposite from Ferrando's one. Ferrando says also two things that we have to remember if we want to understand what will follow in the opera: he says that:

1) the father of the Count of Luna had the feeling that his son was not dead (as we know, he was right) and he made his son promise that he would have kept on looking for him

2) despite the many years which have passed, he could recognize Azucena and he would like to, because thus he would help the Count of Luna to have his revenge on the woman that killed his brother

But let's leave Ferrando and his soldiers to their story...

"Di due figli vivea padre beato/Il buon Conte di Luna..."

Part 1: The duel - A trobadour in the garden

...and let's move to the gardens of the Palace, where Leonora waits for the mysterious man that comes every night and sings for her. She says she had known him before the beginning of the war in a tournament, but then she didn't see him for a long time.

The garden of the Aljaferia Palace

The mysterious man comes and sings his song to Leonora...

...but he does not know that someone is spying him: it's the Count of Luna, who is in love with Leonora and does not want the mysterious trobadour to take her away. Leonora enters in the garden and she wants to hug her mysterious lover but in the darkness she walks into the Count and embraces him. Suddenly, the mysterious man comes out of the shadow, angry for her mistake and accusing her of being infaithful and the Count recognize him: he's Manrico, one of his enemies in the war!

Di geloso amor sprezzato/arde in me tremendo il foco!/Il tuo sangue, o sciagurato,/ ad estinguerlo fia poco!

Leonora says to Manrico: "Well, my love, it was dark and I thought that you were him, there's no need to be so angry! Do you really think I could love the Count?", while the Count wants to kill Manrico because they love the same woman (which is not a great reason, I admit, otherwise the mortality rates in high school would be approximately near to 80%, but, well, you know, this is an opera and in operas characters always want to kill someone). The Count and Manrico exeunt to fight a duel and Leonora faints.

You can see the complete scene here:

Then the curtain falls, the first part of the opera ends and so does our second episode of "A night at the opera". But don't worry: we'll be back soon for our third episode and we'll talk about the second part of this opera: La gitana, "The gipsy woman".

See you soon!

A night at the opera: discovering "Il Trovatore" by Giuseppe Verdi - Episode 1 - A bad mistake: the story so far and the characters of the opera

Good evening ladies and gentlement and let me invite you at the theatre tonight in order to see one of the most beautiful Verdi's operas: Il Trovatore. Here's your favourite bass player speaking and we're ready for the first episode of...

1. Let's know more about "Il Trovatore"

Il Trovatore was first represented in 1853 and, together with Rigoletto and La Traviata, is part of Verdi's Trilogia popolare (Popular trilogy), which is called in this way because the three operas were and still are today loved very much by the audience. It was first represented in Rome and had immediately a huge success. We can understand why: the opera features some of the most beautiful arias and melodies in Verdi's career and it probably is one of the peaks of Verdi's production as a composer.

But Il Trovatore, though very successful among the audiences of all the world, has always been infamous among lots of people above all for its plot, which is really complex, and because it is an opera which is different from its fellows in the Popular Trilogy, being La Traviata and Rigoletto two operas in which we can find a deep look on social issues and a deep psychological analysis on characters, while in Il Trovatore characters have no psychological development during the opera and can appear sometimes a bit stereotyped.

So, is Il Trovatore really "a stupid opera with wonderful music"? I think it isn't and I'll try to show you why.

2. Historical setting

Il Trovatore, whose libretto was written by Salvatore Cammarano (who died before the end of the composition of the opera) from a play by Spanish writer Antonio Garcia Gutierrez, is set in Spain during the XV Century. In particular, the opera shows a specific moment in the history of Spain which is known as the revolt of the Count of Urgell.

In 1412, after the death of king of Aragon Martin I, many noblemen asked to get the crown. The reason was easy: as it often happened in Middle Ages, the king had died without leaving any heir. So, no royal babies in this story, I'm sorry. Well, between all the noblemen who wanted to be king there was the Count of Urgell, who really wanted the crown, but unfortunately didn't manage to get it.

In fact, in the same year, some representatives of kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia and of the Principality of Catalonia met and decided to give the crown to Fernando I of Aragon. This was called the Compromise of Caspe, from the name of the city in which the meeting took place, and, as you can imagine, the Count of Urgell didn't like this result. So, in 1413 he made a revolt against Fernando. He lost and went to prison, but this is not so important, because our story is set exactly during the few months of Urgell's revolt.

What you need to remember out of all those historical stuffs is that the two main male characters of the opera, Manrico and the Count of Luna, are on the opposite sides in this war: Manrico is part of Urgell's army, while the Count of Luna is allied with Fernando.

3. The characters

The main characters, in this opera, are four, two male characters and two female characters. Let's see who they are:

1) Manrico: he is an officer in the army of the Prince of Urgell. This work gives him a lot of free time, so he spends it in singing under the windows of Leonora, the woman he loves. That's why he's called "il Trovatore", "the Trobadour": the trobadour was a musician who, in Middle Ages, sung and entertained the nobles of the court; trobadours often pretended to be in love with the Lady of the Castle and composed songs and poems in her honour. As we can see, Manrico does not exactly do all this: he simply goes under Leonora's window and play for her, but he composes love songs for her, so probably this is the reason why Verdi and Cammarano call him a trobadour while he clearly isn't.

Manrico has humble origins: he believes to be the son of a gipsy woman, Azucena (even though in the end of the opera we'll know he isn't), and is not a nobleman, while his rival, the Count of Luna, is part of the traditional nobility of Spain. So, Manrico is an outsider, as Rigoletto is in Rigoletto and Violetta in La traviata.

2) The Count of Luna: he's a nobleman, he is a rival to Manrico for the love of Leonora and he is allied with Fernando of Aragon, so he and Manrico are enemies also on the battlefield.

You can see him in the picture, he does not seem a nice guy, does he?

3) Leonora: she is a companion to the Queen of Aragon and so she lives in Saragozza together with the Court of Aragon and the Count of Luna in the Aljaferia Palace. Manrico and the Count love her, she loves only Manrico and we can imagine that this will create some small problems during the opera.

4) Azucena: she is a gipsy woman and she's Manrico's mother or at least that's what we all believe...

4. What happened before: the prequel

There are some operas whose stories need some explanation to be understood. Il Trovatore is not one of them: some explanations wouldn't be enough to understand Il Trovatore's story, what would be really useful would be a prequel, better if it was a Star-Wars-like three-movies prequel. If Mr.George Lucas ever reads this blog, well, I'll ask him to think about it.

So, what's the problem with Il Trovatore's plot? The problem is that a part of the story is not shown on scene and what we know about it is what the characters on scene say about this old story. And this part of the story is not something really unimportant that you can ignore without problems, no, it is something which is very important to know in order to understand what happens on scene. So, you have no excuse: you have to know all about the dark past of Azucena, otherwise many parts of the plot will be quite incomprehensible.

Let's take a look at what happened before. It is nothing difficult, don't worry, just imagine this as one of those Star Wars opening crawls which explain you the story so far and everything will be OK...

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far faraway called Spain, lived a Count which was called the Count of Luna. Wow, you'll say, we already know him! He is the angry guy with big moustache we've seen some minutes ago!

No, I'm sorry, this Count of Luna is not him. It's his father: in the times we're talking about the angry moustache guy is a young happy non-moustache boy and we won't care very much about him.

Well, the Count of Luna (the father to the moustache guy) has two sons: one is the moustache-man-to-be, the other is a little baby who sleeps all day in his cradle. Everyone is happy but one day the nurse of the little baby finds a gipsy woman sitting next to the cradle of the Count of Luna's son. This gipsy woman is Azucena's mother and, since the baby falls ill after her visit to his cradle, she is accused to be a witch and burnt at stake.

Azucena wants revenge for her mother's death: so, she abducts the Count of Luna's little baby and she wants to burn him but she makes a little mistake and burns her own son instead of the Count of Luna's one. Ooops... this is embarassing, isn't it? And you surely want to know why she does such a terrible mistake: well, the real answer is that there is no answer, which means that nowhere in the libretto Azucena explains how she could confuse two babies and kill the wrong one.

You can choose the explanation you like most...

1) Azucena was short sighted

2) The babies were identical

3) Add here your own explanation

...but the fact is that Azucena's son is dead and the Count's son isn't and he grows up among the gypsies thinking that Azucena is his mother. After some years, that son of the Count of Luna Azucena did not kill has become an officier in the army of the Count of Urgell and he's in love with a woman called Leonora.

Can you guess who he is? Of course, he is Manrico and he's completely unaware of the fact that the Count of Luna he hates (the man with big moustache, son to the Count of Luna who killed Azucena's mother) is actually his brother. The Count of Luna ignores it too and wants to kill Manrico.

This is what happened before the curtain opens to show us the story we'll talk about in our next post about Il Trovatore, in the second episode of A night at the opera.

See you soon!

Learning Opera with images and words - Let's discover "la Solita Forma", the standard form for Italian opera in 1800

What do you think about when you think of Italian opera? Wonderful singing? Exciting stories full of revenge, passion and murder? That's right: Italian opera is all that. But Italian opera composers weren't people who wrote music only when the inspiration came and who had no rules at all in composing: they were very skillful professionals who had very clear in their minds how to compose an opera. They were a little bit like today Hollywood playwright: they knew that composing a successful opera meant hard work and knowledge of the rules. And, of course, a little bit of chance.

If we walk into the atelier of a Eighteenth century composer, like, for instance, Mozart or Paisiello, we see that all their Italian operas (i.e: operas who were sung in Italian) have the same form: they are made by scenes in which we can find two elements:

1) The Recitativo, which is a little bit boring, but which is the part of the scene in which the action takes place

2) The Aria, which is in the end of the scene and has not a great importance for the development of the story, but which is very interesting from a musical point of view

You can try to find this two elements in the following scene of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro:

What do you think of such a scene? Yes, of course, the aria in the end of it is beautiful, but the long recitativo isn't and this point of view was shared by many composers who, in the beginning of the Nineteenth century tried to "put more music into the opera scenes" and built the so-called solita forma.

What is it? We'll discover that in this episode of our brand new programme A punk at the opera.

The idea of the Solita forma is Rossini's. Rossini, whose main interests were music and food, as we can see in the following image,

thought: why should we put only a very short aria after the very long recitativo? I want an opera full of beautiful music and melody, not a one full of boring recitativos!"

And so he had an idea: he put after the recitativo not one but two arias: a slow aria, which was called the cantabile and a fast one, which was called the cabaletta.

The basic structure of solita forma is the following: scena (recitativo) - cantabile (slow aria) - cabaletta (fast aria)

And so he created the basic structure of the Solita forma, which was made by three parts:

1) Recitativo, which now was called scena

2) Cantabile, which was a slow aria

3) Cabaletta, which was a fast aria

But Rossini wasn't still satisfied. "We need to put something between the cantabile and the cabaletta! The story need to go a little bit on between this two arias" he said and so he put the Tempo di mezzo between the two arias.

What is the Tempo di mezzo? It is a very short piece of music (30 seconds - 2 minutes, even though Verdi creates Tempos di mezzo who last 5-7 minutes) which is, from a musical point of view, more melodic than the recitativo but less than the arias and in which something happens. Something sudden and unexpected, usually: for instance, the main character receives a letter which says that his mother has been imprisoned and will be executed (Il trovatore), a character who was believed to be dead appears again (Il trovatore, again) or someone asks something to the main character (Lucia di Lammermoor).

In every case, the Tempo di mezzo is always very short and what happens in it is very simple.

So, the basic structure of the Solita forma is this:

1) First of all, we have a Recitativo or Scena in which the story goes on, the characters talk and things happen:

Scena, in which the action takes place: "Hello!" "Oh, hello! Do you know my daughter?" "I don't! Well, I'm John, nice to meet you!"

2) Now, what happened in the Recitativo evokes a feeling in one of the characters on scene. That character expresses what he's feeling with a slow aria, the Cantabile

Cantabile, slow aria: "What a beautiful girl! I love you!"

3) But suddenly... suprise! Something unexpected happen: here's the Tempo di mezzo:

Tempo di mezzo, in which something happens (again): "Hello!" "Who are you?" "I'm Moiro the acrobat and I love you more than John!" "Do you?"

4) What happened in the Tempo di mezzo inspires another feeling in the character who sang the Cantabile and he expresses this feeling by singing another aria: the Cabaletta. It is a fast aria and it is usually repeated twice: the first time, the singer sings it as the composer wrote it, the second time he adds highs and grace-notes in order to show his vocal abilities.

Cabaletta, fast aria: "I love you more than Moiro and I'll show that by singing this song with a jazz band of flying acrobats!"

Well, to be honest, we should say that this is not always true. In fact, this structure of the Solita forma is used only when only one singer sings in the cantabile and in the cabaletta: when the singers who sing there are more than one, the composer puts a melodic bridge between the recitativo and the cantabile. It is called Tempo d'attacco and we can find that in duets, quartets and so on. In the Tempo d'attacco, usually the characters who will sing together in the cantabile and in the cabaletta, have a dialogue, as we can see in the following example taken from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor:

The difference between the Tempo d'attacco and the two arias is that in the Tempo d'attacco the two (or three, four...) singers never (or hardly ever) sing together, while in the arias they always do. To see the difference, here's the complete scene from Lucia di Lammermoor, in which the Tempo d'attacco we heard is followed by a Cabaletta (well, I know, that's a little bit strange - the Tempo d'attacco should be followed by a Cantabile, then by a Tempo di mezzo and only at last by the Cabaletta - but it happens that composers for theatrical reasons sometimes don't use some parts of the Solita forma. Verdi will do worse, believe me).

Can you see the difference?

Well, now, let's sum up:

1) If the two arias are sung by a single singer, the scene is built like that: Recitativo (Scena) - Cantabile - Tempo di Mezzo - Cabaletta

2) If we have a duet, a quartet and so on, the Solita forma is modified like that: Recitativo (Scena) - Tempo d'attacco - Cantabile - Tempo di Mezzo - Cabaletta

If you want to impress your friends by showing your knowledge of Italian Opera (please don't), you will be probably pleased to know that there is another kind of Solita forma. What kind? Well, ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the wonderful...

What is the "Finale"? It is the end of an act ("Fine", in Italian, means "end"), but the solita forma we're talking about is the one we can find in the Finale of the second act of  Opera seria (which is the opera which talks about tragic and serious subjects and which have three acts) or of the first act of the Opera buffa (which is comic and has two acts). It is the so-called "Central Finale", i.e. the Finale which you can find in the middle of the opera.

Well, the Finale has a very particular Solita forma, because in the beginning of it you'll never find a recitativo but...

Yes, there's always a choir singing in the beginning of the Finale. The rest of the Finale is nothing strange, but you have to remember two things:

1) In the Finale, you can usually find on scene (and singing) all the characters of the opera. For instance, in the small opera we created in order to explain the parts of Solita Forma the characters are John (aka "The punk at the opera"), Moiro the acrobat, the girl they love and her father: well, in the Finale of the first act (it is a comic opera, isn't it?) we'll find all those characters on stage and singing for our delight.

2) In the Finale, the two arias of the Solita forma change their names (but they are nothing different): the Cantabile is called Concertato (because all the characters sing together and concertare, in 1800s Italian, meant something like "making many instrument or singers play or sing together") and the Cabaletta is called Stretta.

It's easy, isn't it? Well, you're know ready to see the Finale of the first act of our beloved opera Johnny the Punk against Moiro the acrobat and recognize the single parts of its Solita Forma:

I know, it's not a very instructive end: people shouldn't drink and so on. But, well, if you have a better idea for that, please tell me and I will see what I can do.

If you want to test your skills in recognizing the parts of the Solita forma of the Finale, you can go and listen to the Finale of Lucia di Lammermoor Act II (you can find it here). Can you recognize the parts of the Solita forma we've seen? Just a tip: this is the stretta:

Wonderful, isn't it? Just in case you didn't notice it: I love Donizetti, but let's move on.

This is the structure of the Solita forma, now there's only one thing left to do: you may ask in what composers' operas we can find the Solita forma. It is very simple, indeed: you can find it:

1) In some Rossini's opera, given that Rossini, as we said before, was the creator of Solita forma

2) In all Italian operas written in the 1830s. The main composers in this period are two: Vincenzo Bellini, a Sicilian composer who had a lot of success in Northern Italy...

...and Gaetano Donizetti, a composer from Bergamo, in Lombardia, who had a lot of success in Naples and in Southern Italy.

Someone says Bergamo composer Donizetti wrote the music of worldwide known Neapolitan song "Te voglio bene assaje"

Donizetti was very successful in Naples and someone says that he has also written the music of one of the most beautiful Neapolitan songs, which you can hear below. I have to say that many authors disagree with this attribution, but I love Te voglio bene assaje, and I wanted to put it here.

3) In Verdi's operas, but Verdi makes many changes to the Solita forma: he does not change the structure, but he makes very long Tempi di mezzo and he uses Recitativo as sort of a monologue (for instance in Rigoletto). We'll talk about that later.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, sadly we reached now the end of our episode of A punk at the opera. This was the story and the structure of the Solita forma, the standard form of 1800s Italian opera. Knowing it will help you understanding better Italian opera and show your high knowledge of opera to your friend during your future travels to Italy or next time you'll go to the Opera theatre. I hope you enjoyed your visit and we'll see again soon for another episode of A punk at the opera.

See you soon!