[Met Performance] CID:13450

New Production

Il Trovatore
Metropolitan Opera House, Fri, November 30, 1894

Debut : Giuseppe Campanari




Il Trovatore (18)
Giuseppe Verdi | Salvatore Cammarano
Manrico
Francesco Tamagno

Leonora
Libia Drog

Count Di Luna
Giuseppe Campanari [Debut]

Azucena
Eugenia Mantelli

Ferrando
Alfonso Mariani

Ines
Mathilde Bauermeister

Ruiz
Roberto Vanni

Gypsy
Antonio Rinaldini


Conductor
Enrico Bevignani


Director
William Parry





Il Trovatore received ten performances this season.

Review 1:

Review ?.

The Performance of "Trovatore" at the Metropolitan Opera House

An excellent and even presentation of "Trovatore" was given last night with Tamagno, Mlle. Drog, Mme. Mantelli, Signor Campanari, Signor Mariani and others in the cast. This made a strong "ensemble," which carried the florid music of Verdi along with that fervor and extravagant emotional quality which it demands. All the realism possible to be put into this furiously overwrought and wildly imaginative opera, whose plot resembles the vagaries of a mild nightmare, was done by the order and precision of strict stage management, and by the elucidation furnished by four competent principals, Tamagno, Drog, Mantelli, and Campanari.

Mlle. Drog certainly gives but a feeble individuality to any of her characters, being apparently quite unemancipated from the old traditions of opera singers who, with aimless waving white arms and impetuously clasped hands, make gestures of grief, joy rage, despair, hope denunciation, affection or scorn unalterably the same.

But Drog's voice, if not always not perfectly at her command, or fraught with the varying timbres which brainy singers apply to the expression of their phrases, is generally pleasant in tone and is powerful and beautiful in climaxes and upon high notes. In the latter portions of the opera she was heard to the best advantage.

Tamagno has done no such creditable work since he has sung here this season as he did last evening. The role of Manrico suites him well, and although he frequently indulged last night in disagreeable nasal and bleating sounds, yet quite as often did he give fine large chest tones. The "Di quella pira" was a magnificent explosion, and such a high "C" was surely never heard from any other throat. It was not only immense in length, breadth and height, but was very beautiful, very smooth, and attained without the slightest apparent effort. The applause was great and prolonged, the aria was encored, and the judicious wished that Tamagno would learn to sing in such a manner and method as always to display the extreme natural splendor of the vocal organ, which, in spite of continued misuse, serves him so well and obediently.

Signor Campanari won much esteem by a careful and dignified impersonation, as well as for his really fine voice. Mantelli made the best Azucena that has ever been played or sung in New York.



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