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:
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| 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,
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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...
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| 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...
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| "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.
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| 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!
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| 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!
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