[Met Performance] CID:155500



Il Trovatore
Metropolitan Opera House, Thu, December 28, 1950

Debut : Barbara Troxell




Il Trovatore (248)
Giuseppe Verdi | Salvatore Cammarano
Manrico
Kurt Baum

Leonora
Delia Rigal

Count Di Luna
Leonard Warren

Azucena
Fedora Barbieri

Ferrando
Nicola Moscona

Ines
Barbara Troxell [Debut]

Ruiz
Thomas Hayward

Messenger
Paul Franke

Gypsy
John Baker


Conductor
Alberto Erede


Director
Herbert Graf

Set Designer
Harry Horner

Costume Designer
Mary Percy Schenck





Il Trovatore received sixteen performances this season.

Review 1:

Virgil Thomson in the Herald Tribune

“IL TROVATORE”

 

Verdi’s “Il Trovatore,” when performed with all the care and brio it enjoyed last night at the Metropolitan Opera House, is grand opera in anybody’s meaning of the term. It has drama in it, and there is drama in the tunes. It has lots of scenery in it, too, and costumes adorned with hardware. Add singers with real voices and an eighty piece orchestra, and you have the elements of a serious musical spectacle about medieval Spain. That the opera took on coherence and became such a spectacle is largely due to the care and brio with which Alberto Erede directed it from the pit.

 

Helping, however, was an elegant cast of stars. The most perfect vocalist among these, as well as the most refined, was Leonard Warren, who sang perfectly the Count di Luna. Kurt Baum, as Manrico, came close; and his high C brought down the house, as usual. So did Fedora Barbieri in the role of Azucena, though some of the enthusiasm sounded like claque work to me. All the same, she had a huge success; and she had deserved it. A commanding alto voice with real brilliance in it and an instinct for the dramatic make up for this artist’s present incomplete mastery of bravura vocalism. Nicola Moscona, as Ferrando, was distinguished, as usual. Thomas Hayward sang exquisitely a “bit” role. And Barbara Troxell, making her debut with this company in the smallish part of Inez, worked charmingly, did everything just right.

 

Delia Rigal, in the role of Leonora, looked beautiful and did some fine singing. She also sang poorly at times, as she is wont to do, trembled a bit, and missed her pitches, in spite of lovely appearance and a handsome voice. I found her not very meaningful. A preoccupation with plastic attitudes took my attention (and I think, her own) off the singing she was doing. When she worked objectively, she sang well. When she went all ego centric and began posing, she did not. I am sure she would be an impressive vocalist, as well as a better actress, if she would keep her mind on her singing.

 

“Il Trovatore” has long been one of the pieces the Met does well. Last night it had animation unusual. Also it profited from the brilliance of Miss Barbieri’s electric contact with her audience. It was not one of those occasions when liveliness gets out of hand. It was an evening with power in it, power in the music: in the orchestral discipline, in the voices themselves and in the temperaments present on the stage. I recommend it highly and do hope the present cast will be kept together.



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