[Met Performance] CID:106110



Il Trovatore
Metropolitan Opera House, Wed, November 5, 1930




Il Trovatore (175)
Giuseppe Verdi | Salvatore Cammarano
Manrico
Giovanni Martinelli

Leonora
Rosa Ponselle

Count Di Luna
Mario Basiola

Azucena
Julia Claussen

Ferrando
Pavel Ludikar

Ines
Minnie Egener

Ruiz
Giordano Paltrinieri

Gypsy
Alfredo Gandolfi


Conductor
Vincenzo Bellezza


Director
Armando Agnini

Set Designer
Mario Sala

Set Designer
James Fox





Il Trovatore received three performances this season.

Review 1:

Review in The New York Times

With Rosa PonseIle for Leonora and Martinelli as a full-throated Manrico, Verdi's "Trovatore" had a brilliant performance last night in the Metropolitan Opera House. If there had been no rigid rules prohibiting encores, every single one of the familiar airs could easily have been repeated. The continued hold upon all types of opera-goers of this early work of the great Italian composer, which on this occasion had its first presentation of the Metropolitan's season, testifies not only to the recognition of its simple but inspired music, but to the unalterable axiom of opera that to have good opera one must have good singers. It is questionable if the music of any living composer approaches this work in virility or ability to hold the interest of the auditor from the first note until the last.

Judged individually, the singing of the two leading artists was unusually excellent. The lyric sweep of the heroine's voice was never in better evidence. Her accuracy of pitch was magnificent. Such subtleties as favoring certain notes in change of key; well-known to all students of music, was but one of the many attributes of her art for which she is famous. In florid passages each note sounded in a manner to justify superlatives, and the whole evening failed to reveal a forced tone or the remotest suggestion of technical difficulty. Miss Ponselle's performance glorified the music and made the listener realize again the vitality of Verdi's opera. Mr. Martinelli sang with his accustomed fervor. On this as on previous occasions his tones became the more lyric as he approached the upper extremities. His is a voice pre-eminently adapted to the stress and the mood of Verdi in heroic vein.

From the histrionic point of view, the interpretation of the two leading artists was not different from the ordinarily accepted standards of acting in this old-fashioned opera. Melodramatic as the libretto is, the singers, even those versed well in its traditions, seldom attempt to give it very much action. Last night's interpretation reached its effect through the vitality, eloquence and beauty of the principals' singing. Miss Claussen, of all the rest, was most notable for histrionic interpretation. The rest of the cast was competently coordinated, though Mr. Bellezza resorted at times to rather obvious over-beating.



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