Il Trovatore Page 1

Il Trovatore

“The Troubadour”

Italian opera in four acts

Music by Giuseppe Verdi

Libretto by Salvatore Cammarano,

after El Trovador (1836), a tragedy by

the Spanish

playwright, Antonio García Gutiérrez

(The final libretto was completed by Emmanuele

Bardareafter Cammarano’s premature death.)

Premiere at the Teatro Apollo, Rome,

January 1853

Adapted from the

Opera Journeys Lecture Series

by

Burton D. Fisher

Story Synopsis

Page 2

Principal Characters in the Opera

Page 4

Story Narrative with Music Highlights Page4
Verdi and Il Trovatore

Page 17

the Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series

Published/Copywritten by Opera Journeys

www

.operajourneys.com

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Story Synopsis

The Il Trovatore story takes place in

Spain during the early 15

th

century: a civil

war rages between the armies of the Duke
of Urgel, a pretender to the throne, and King
Juan I of Aragon: Manrico is allied with
Urgel, and the young Count di Luna with
the King; these two enemies in war are
also rivals for Leonora, a beautiful lady-in-
waiting to the Queen of Aragon.

Fifteen years before the opera story

begins, an old gypsy was accused of
bewitching the elder Count di Luna’s infant
son, and thus causing the child’s subsequent
deathly illness: afterwards, the gypsy was
burned at the stake. Her daughter, Azucena,
to avenge her mother’s execution, kidnapped
the di Luna infant, intending to cast him into
the fires. But in her deranged state of mind,
she accidentally cast her own son into the
fires. Azucena escaped with the di Luna child,
named him Manrico, and raised him as her
own son.

In Act I, “The Duel,” Manrico, a

troubadour, serenades Leonora from the
palace garden. His rival, Count di Luna,
confronts him. A duel ensues and Manrico
triumphs, but spares di Luna’s life.

In Act II, “The Gypsy Mother,” Manrico’s

surrogate mother, the gypsy Azucena,
relates the events of her mother’s horrible
execution by the elder di Luna. Manrico,
shocked at the cruelty, joins his mother and
vows revenge against the di Luna family.

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Leonora believes that Manrico died in

battle and escapes to the convent of Castellor

to take her vows. Di Luna attempts to
kidnap Leonora, but retreats after Manrico
and Urgel’s soldiers overwhelm him.

In Act III, “The Gypsy Woman’s Son,”

di Luna prepares to attack the fortress of
Castellor to re-kidnap Leonora. Azucena is
captured by di Luna’s army. In panic, she
calls for Manrico’s help. Di Luna is delighted
that he has captured his enemy’s mother: he
vows double vengeance.

Inside Castellor, just as Manrico and

Leonora are about to be wed, Manrico learns
that di Luna captured Azucena and plans to
execute her at the stake. Manrico rushes
off to rescue his mother.

In Act IV, “The Torture,” Manrico and

Azucena have been captured and are
imprisoned awaiting execution. Leonora
offers to sacrifice herself to di Luna to save
Manrico: di Luna agrees, but Leonora
secretly takes poison.

Leonora arrives at the prison to tell

Manrico that he is free: di Luna sees Leonora
in Manrico’s arms, realizes he has been
betrayed, and orders the immediate execution
of Manrico and Azucena. Leonora dies from
the poison. After Manrico is executed,
Azucena reveals to di Luna that he has killed
his own brother: she shrieks with joy that at
last she has fulfilled her life’s obsession; her
mother has been avenged.

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Principal Characters in the Opera

Leonora, a Lady-in-Waiting to the
Queen of Aragon

Soprano

Count di Luna, a noble

Baritone

Manrico, a soldier and troubadour Tenor
Azucena, a gypsy Mezzo Soprano
Ferrando, a captain of
di Luna’s guard

Bass

Inez, Leonora’s attendant

Soprano

Ruiz, Manrico’s lieutenant

Tenor

Soldiers of Urgel and Aragon, gypsies, nuns

of Castellor

TIME:

the year 1409

PLACE:

Spain, the provinces
of Biscay and Aragon

Story Narrative with Music Highlights

A twice repeated drum roll is followed by

a burst of trumpets, a chivalric yet ominous
introduction to the forthcoming tragedy.

Opening music:

ACT I: “ The Duel”
Scene 1 - Midnight at the Palace of Aliaferia
in Aragon, Spain

The Queen is in residence in the di Luna

palace of Aliaferia. The young Count di Luna
passes the night before the window of the
woman he passionately loves, the Queen’s
beautiful lady-in-waiting, Leonora. The Count
has become consumed with jealousy and has

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ordered his soldiers to be on guard for a
mysterious, unknown rival who serenades
Leonora by night.

The soldiers huddle around a fire.

Ferrando, a captain in di Luna’s guard,
narrates the gruesome story that occurred
fifteen years ago when the Count’s baby
brother, Garzía, disappeared.

Garzía’s nurse awoke one morning to find a

sinister old gypsy hag in sorcerer’s robes
hovering over the baby’s cradle, her bloodshot
eyes staring fixedly on the child. The nurse
screamed, help arrived, and the gypsy was
seized, protesting that she had only come to tell
the baby’s fortune. The gypsy was released, but
afterwards, the child became deathly ill with a
lingering fever. All thought that he would die,
believing that his affliction was caused by an
“evil-eye” curse laid on the child by the old
gypsy. Di Luna’s soldiers pursued the gypsy in
the mountains of Biscay, apprehended her,
accused her of witchcraft, and then executed
her at the stake.

In terror, the old gypsy’s daughter vowed to

avenge her mother’s brutal death: she kidnapped
the di Luna infant, Garzía, from his cradle. After
his disappearance, a frantic search ensued, but
all that was found was a small half-charred
skeleton smoldering on the exact spot where
the old gypsy had been burned. The Count di
Luna was broken-hearted, but was never fully
convinced that his infant son was dead. Soon
thereafter, while the Count was on his deathbed,
he made his other son, the present Count di
Luna, swear that he would be unceasing in his
search for his brother.

The executed gypsy’s daughter vanished.

However, it is believed that she still lives in
Biscay and roves the countryside: Ferrando
is certain that he would immediately recognize
her savage face if he saw her again.

After hearing Ferrando’s tale about gypsy

sorceresses and the di Luna family misfortunes,

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the soldiers shiver with superstitious dread.
The midnight bell sounds, and they all depart
and enter the palace for the night.

ACT I - Scene 2: A terrace of the palace.

Leonora, a lady-in-waiting to the Queen of

Aragon, strolls on the garden terrace with her
attendant and confidant, Inez, heedless to Inez’s
reminder that the Queen calls her from inside
the palace. Leonora has come to this secluded
corner of the palace garden hoping to meet her
secret lover, Manrico, the troubadour who has
been visiting the palace at night and serenades
her from the garden.

Leonora: Tacea la notte

Leonora confides to Inez that she met

Manrico when he was participating in a jousting
tournament. He was an unknown knight in black
who won every joust, and she had the honor to
bestow the victory crown upon him. After the
outbreak of the civil war, the mysterious knight
vanished.

But suddenly he has reappeared, serenading

her at night and invoking her name in beautiful
song. Inez tries to dissuade Leonora, fearing
that her lover is an enemy of Aragon in the
civil war; her passion for him can only lead
to sorrow and anguish. Nevertheless, Leonora
has become captivated and enraptured by the
mysterious knight: she affirms her intense love
for him and vows that she would gladly die for
him.

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Leonora: Di tale amor che dirsi…

After Leonora and Inez enter the palace, the

Count di Luna appears in the shadows. As he
expresses his obsessive passion for Leonora,
he is suddenly interrupted by the sound of a lute:
his rival for Leonora has evaded his guards and
is presently in the palace garden.

The troubadour’s serenade laments his sad

destiny: he is lonely on earth, and is doomed to
fight in wars. .

Manrico’s Serenade: Deserto sulla terra…

When Leonora hears the troubadour’s

serenade, she rushes from the palace to greet
her lover, but in the darkness, she mistakenly
embraces the Count di Luna. The troubadour
then appears, raises his knight’s visor and reveals
his identity: “I am Manrico,” further announcing
that he is an officer in the Urgel’s army.

The Count erupts into a frenzy of jealousy

and anger, incriminating the troubadour as an
outlaw and his enemy in the civil war. Passions
reach a furious climax as Manrico and the
Count di Luna, now bitter rivals in love and
war, duel in mortal combat: Manrico is
victorious but spares di Luna’s life; Leonora
faints.

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ACT II: “The Gypsy Mother”
Several months later. A gypsy camp in the
mountains of Biscay.

The warfare between Urgel and Aragon

continues unabated. Manrico, severely wounded
in the recent battle at Pelila, is recovering in
the gypsy camp where he is cared for by his
mother, Azucena.

In medieval times, many gypsies were

tinkers by trade: they are seen in their mountain
retreat working at their anvils.

Chorus: Anvil Chorus

Azucena is a wild and hideous creature,

prematurely aged, and seemingly shattered in
her wits. Nevertheless, with her son Manrico,
she characterizes true motherly love,
tenderness, and affection.

Azucena stands by a fire on the very spot

where her mother was executed: She seems
mesmerized by the fire and craves revenge.

Azucena: Stride la vampa…

Azucena is obsessed, haunted, and

tormented by the memory of her mother’s
execution by the old Count di Luna. With
Manrico at her side, she relates the grim and
horrifying details of that dreadful moment.

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Azucena’s tale begins where Ferrando’s

earlier story left off. Her mother was led to
the stake by the old Count’s soldiers, and she
followed behind while carrying her infant son
in her arms. Several times she tried to approach
her mother, but was driven off by di Luna’s brutal
soldiers. It was then, seething with revenge, that
she kidnapped the infant Garzía. She stood
before the pyres bearing both infants: her own,
and di Luna’s. Her mother was placed on the
pyres, barefoot and disheveled, and just before
her death, decreed her last words to her
daughter: Mi vendica, “Avenge me,” a grieving
plea that has remained eternally engraved in
Azucena’s soul.

Manrico asks Azucena: “And did you avenge

her?” Azucena reveals that in her heartbroken
and tormented state, she obeyed her mother’s
command for revenge, and flung the infant into
the flames. But in her delirium, dazed with hate
and grief, she made a terrible mistake and threw
her own son into the fire. When the horror
faded, there, lying beside her, was the Count di
Luna’s infant son, Garzía: Azucena murdered
her own child! Manrico reacts to her story with
shock and horror.

However, Azucena’s story bewilders

Manrico. If Azucena mistakenly cast her own
son into the fire, then who is he? Azucena
retracts her story and excuses herself,
explaining that she was overcome with a
momentary delirium; when she recalled those
gruesome events of her mother’s execution,
she became confused. Azucena immediately
reassures Manrico that she is indeed his mother,
and reminds him that after he was reported dead
at the battle of Pelila, she hastened there to give
him a proper burial, and when she found him
severely wounded, she nursed him back to
health with maternal devotion, care, and
tenderness.

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After Azucena’s dreadful story ends,

Manrico, with soldierly pride, proceeds to
relate the details of his duel with the Count di
Luna. He reveals that he could have dispatched
him with ease, but some mysterious instinct
held him back, perhaps a voice from heaven
preventing him from striking the fatal blow.

Manrico: Mal reggendo all’aspro assalto,

However, after Manrico hears his mother’s

tale about the horrors the di Lunas have
inflicted on her mother, he turns to sympathy
and sorrow, and vows revenge on the Count.
Azucena exults: Manrico has become her
instrument to fulfill her longed for revenge;
Manrico will exact justice for her mother’s
execution by the old Count di Luna.

Ruiz, Manrico’s lieutenant, announces that

the Count di Luna is planning to abduct Leonora.
Leonora believed that her beloved troubadour
had died in the battle of Pelila, and in her futility,
decided to enter a convent and take her vows.
Di Luna became aware of her intentions and
plans to kidnap her from the very threshold of
the convent. Manrico decides to gather his
troops and rescue Leonora.

Azucena becomes fearful and anxious. She

tries to dissuade Manrico with tears and
protests, appealing to him not to risk his life
while he is still weak from his wounds.
Nevertheless, Azucena is tormented by her
inner conflicts: Manrico has become her
instrument for revenge, and she fears that
losing him would defeat her life’s passion; at
the same time, she loves Manrico as a son,
and she fears for his safety.

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Act II - Scene 2: The Cloister of the Convent
at Castellor

The Count di Luna believes Manrico died

in battle, therefore, all obstacles to possessing
Leonora have been removed. He plans to abduct
Leonora from the convent before she takes her
vows.

The Count reflects on his passionate love

for Leonora.

Di Luna: Il balen del suo sorriso…

A chorus of nuns solemnly condemn the

vanity of earthly possessions. Leonora, about
to take her vows and join the sisterhood,
expresses her hope that she may meet her
beloved Manrico among the souls in Heaven.

Count di Luna and his soldiers arrive to

abduct Leonora, and almost immediately
thereafter, Manrico appears to challenge him.
Suddenly, Manrico’s lieutenant, Ruiz, arrives
with soldiers of Urgel, overwhelm di Luna, but
all judiciously and respectfully avoid a
confrontation in the convent.

Leonora abandons her vows and

ecstatically falls into Manrico’s arms. Manrico
is given command of Castellor as di Luna
departs in a maniacal frenzy of frustration,
defeated passion, and disgrace: both enemies
curse each other and vow to continue their
rivalry until death.

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ACT III – Scene 1:
“ The Gypsy Woman’s Son”

In the fortress of Castellor, Manrico and

Leonora prepare to be married.

Manrico: Ah sì ben mio coll’essere io tuo,

Count di Luna and his soldiers have

surrounded the castle, intending to seize it and
capture Manrico and Leonora. In relishing his
victory, di Luna exults that he will have at his
mercy, Manrico, his enemy and rival, and finally,
Leonora, the woman for whom he lusts.

Azucena is captured while inadvertently

crossing through di Luna’s camp. Ferrando
interrogates Azucena, recognizes her, and is
fully convinced that she is their long desired
criminal, the gypsy’s daughter who kidnapped
the di Luna infant. Ferrando swears to di Luna:
“It is that wretched woman who committed the
horrid deed!” Azucena futilely tries to persuade
them that they are mistaken, but she is
condemned.

Azucena: Giorni poveri vivea,

Azucena is bound, and in desperation, cries

out to Manrico for help. The Count becomes
exultant when he realizes that he has captured
his rival’s mother. Without hesitation, he
orders Azucena to be executed on pyres to
be built in sight of his besieged enemy at
Castellor.

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ACT III - Scene 2:

In Castellor, Manrico and Leonora are about

to be married, but they are suddenly interrupted
by Ruiz, who informs him that his mother
has been captured by di Luna’s forces and is
about to be burned on the stake. From a castle
window, Manrico becomes horrified when he
sees the fires being prepared. He summons his
troops, postpones his marriage, and informs
Leonora that his duty commands him to leave:
“I was a son before I became a lover!”

In an expanded moment of heroic resolution

and filial devotion, Manrico rushes off to
rescue his mother.

Manrico: Di quella pira…

ACT IV: - The Torture (or The Punishment)

Manrico failed in his efforts to save

Azucena. Castellor was overrun by di Luna
and his forces; Manrico was defeated and
captured, but Leonora escaped.

Manrico and Azucena are chained and

imprisoned in the tower of Aliaferia. Leonora
has come to Aliferia to negotiate with di Luna
to save Manrico: she will sacrifice her life for
Manrico; her ring contains poison.

Leonora: D’amor sull’ali rosee…

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From outside the prison, chanting monks

pray for mercy for dying souls: the Miserere.
The troubadour is heard singing from his tower
cell: his last farewell to his beloved Leonora
and his desperate yearning for death to relieve
his agony. Leonora hears his passionate lament
and prays for mercy.

Manrico and Leonora: Miserere

The Count is seen relishing his victory at

Castellor: nevertheless, he is chagrined that he
failed to find Leonora. Suddenly, Leonora
appears before him.

Leonora pleads with di Luna to spare

Manrico’s life: in exchange, she offers herself
to him. Di Luna, overjoyed by his longed-for
victory, consents: “He shall live!” But Leonora
betrays him, and whispers aside: “You shall
possess me, but cold and lifeless!” Leonora
surreptitiously swallows a slow poison from
her ring. Nevertheless, di Luna is ecstatic: he
has finally won Leonora and satisfied his
passion, albeit without honor.

ACT IV – Scene 2: Inside the tower

Manrico soothes his weak, terrified, and

distraught mother. She has become crazed in
realizing that she is to be burned alive, and again
recalls the horror of her mother’s execution.
To avoid the reality of their doomed fate, they
nostalgically dream about returning to the
freedom in the mountains of Biscay.

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Manrico and Azucena: Ai nostri monti..

Suddenly, Leonora arrives at the prison and

announces that Manrico is free. Manrico turns
to rage when he speculates on the price she
paid for his freedom; his honor is offended.
However, Leonora reveals her sacrifice, telling
him that “Rather than live for another, I chose
to die for you”: Manrico’s joy turns to despair.

Count di Luna appears at the cell, sees

Leonora and Manrico embraced, and bitterly
realizes that she betrayed him. Suddenly,
Leonora dies from the poison: Manrico is
ordered to his execution, and bids a last farewell
to his mother.

The Count drags Azucena to the tower

window and forces her to watch her son’s
execution. As the blade falls, Azucena cries out:
“He was your brother!” Di Luna shrieks with
horrified anguish at the headless body of the
man he has just executed: his brother, Garzía di
Luna. Fratricide becomes di Luna’s final horror
as he shouts in terrified torment: “Yet I am
still alive.”

Azucena’s obsession for revenge has

destroyed the spirit and soul of Count di Luna.
Deliriously, she proclaims her victory, the
triumph of her irrational passion: “Mother, you
are avenged!”

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Verdi…..……………………and Il Trovatore

A

t mid-point in the nineteenth century, the

37 year-old Giuseppe Verdi had become

acknowledged as the most popular opera
composer in the world: his operas were the
opera box office rage, and some concluded
that he single handedly had all of Italy - and
the world – singing his music. Verdi’s operas
were Italian to the core, dutifully preserving
the great legacy and traditions of his immediate
predecessors, the bel canto giants, Rossini,
Bellini, and Donizetti: In Verdi’s operas, voice
and melody remained the supreme core of
the art form.

Viewing the opera landscape at mid-century,

Rossini had retired almost 20 years earlier,
Bellini died in 1835, Donizetti died in 1848,
the premiere of Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète took
place in 1849, and Wagner’s Lohengrin
premiered in 1850. Seemingly, the only active
opera composer whose works were capable
of mesmerizing audiences was Verdi.

Between the years 1839 and 1850, Verdi

composed 15 operas. His first opera, Oberto
(1839), indicated promise for the young, 26
year-old budding opera composer, but his
second opera, the comedy, Un Giorno di
Regno (1840), was not only received with
indifference, but was a total failure.

Verdi’s third opera, Nabucco (1842),

became a sensational triumph and catapulted the
him to immediate world-wide critical and
popular acclaim. He proceeded to follow with
one success after another: I Lombardi (1843);
Ernani (1844); I Due Foscari (1844);
Giovanna d’Arco (1845); Alzira (1845); Attila
(1846); Macbeth (1847); I Masnadieri (1847);
Il Corsaro (1848); La Battaglia di Legnano
(1849); Luisa Miller (1849); and Stiffelio
(1850).

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Verdi’s early operas all contained an

underlying theme: his patriotic mission for the
liberation of his beloved Italy from oppressive
foreign rule: particularly, France and Austria.
Verdi, with his operatic pen, sounded the alarm
for Italy’s freedom: The underlying stories in
his early operas were disguised with allegory
that advocated individual liberty, freedom, and
independence for Italy; the suffering and
struggling heroes and heroines in those early
operas were metaphorically his beloved Italian
compatriots.

In Giovanna d’Arco (“Joan of Arc” 1845),

the French patriot Joan becomes a martyr after
she confronts the oppressive English, the
French monarchy, and the Church: the heroine’s
plight, synonymous with Italy’s struggle against
oppression. In Nabucco (1842), the biblical
story of Nebuchadnezzar, the suffering
Hebrews, enslaved by the Babylonians, were
allegorically the Italian people themselves,
similarly in bondage by foreign oppressors.

Verdi’s Italian audience easily understood

the underlying messages subtly injected
between the lines of his text and nobly
expressed through his musical language. At
Nabucco’s premiere, at the conclusion of the
Hebrew slave chorus, Va Pensiero, the
audience stopped the performance for 15
minutes with wildly inspired shouts of Viva
Italia: an explosion of nationalism that, in
order to prevent riots, forced the authorities
to assign extra police to later performances
of the opera. The Va Pensiero chorus became
the emotional and unofficial “Italian National
Anthem,” the musical inspiration for Italy’s
patriotic aspirations. Even the name V E R D
I had a dual meaning: homage to the great
maestro expressed as Viva Verdi, and the
letters V E R D I denoted Vittorio Emanuelo
Re D’ Italia: The return of King Victor
Emmanuel was synonymous with Italian
liberation and unification.

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As the 1850s unfolded, Verdi’s creative

genius had arrived at a turning point in terms
of his artistic inspiration, evolution, and
maturity. He felt satisfied that his objective
for Italian independence was soon to be
realized: the Risorgimento of 1861 made
Italian nationhood a fait accompli.

Verdi now decided to abandon the heroic

pathos and nationalistic themes of his early
operas. He began to seek more profound
operatic subjects: subjects that would be bold
to the extreme; subjects with greater dramatic
and psychological depth; subjects that accented
spiritual values, intimate humanity, and tender
emotions. He became ceaseless in his goal to
express the human soul on the operatic stage
more profoundly that it had ever been realized.

The year 1851 inaugurated Verdi’s “middle

period,” a defining moment in his career in
which his operas started to contain heretofore
unknown dramatic qualities, a profound
characterization of humanity, and an exceptional
lyricism. Verdi’s creative art began to flower
into a new maturity with operas that would
eventually become some of the best loved
works composed for the lyric theater: Rigoletto
(1851); Il Trovatore (1853); La Traviata
(1853); I Vespri Siciliani (1855); Simon
Boccanegra (1857); Aroldo (1857); Un Ballo
in Maschera (1859); La Forza del Destino
(1862); Don Carlos (1867); and Aïda (1871).

As Verdi approached the twilight of his

prolific operatic career, he was supposed to be
relishing his “golden years.” It was a time when
the fires of ambition were supposed to become
extinguished, and a time when most people
become spectators in the show of life rather
than its stars. However, the great opera
composer defied the natural order and
epitomized the words of Robert Browning’s
Rabbi Ben Ezra: “Grow old along with me. The
best is yet to be.”

Consequently, Verdi overturned the

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equation and transformed his old age into a
glory: “The best is yet to be” became his last
two operatic masterpieces, Otello (1887), and
Falstaff (1893), both composed respectively
a the ages of 74 and 80. These operas are
unprecedented in their integration between
text and music and in their internal,
architectural organic integration: they are
considered by many to be the greatest Italian
music dramas and tour de forces in the entire
canon. Verdi eventually composed 28 operas
during his illustrious career, dying in 1901 at
the age of 88.

I

n 1851, Verdi was approached by the

management of La Fenice in Venice to write

an opera to celebrate the Carnival and Lent
seasons. In seeking a story source for the opera,
Verdi turned to the new romanticism of the
French dramatist, Victor Hugo, a writer whose
Hernani he successfully treated in his opera
Ernani seven years earlier in 1844.

Victor Hugo’s play, Le Roi s’amuse, “The

King Has a Good Time,” portrayed the libertine
escapades and adventures of François I of
France (1515-1547), the drama featuring as
its unconventional protagonist, an ugly,
disillusioned, hunchbacked court jester named
Triboulet: he was an ambivalent and tragically
repulsive character who possessed two souls;
physically monstrous, morally evil, and wicked
personality, but simultaneously, a
magnanimous, kind, gentle, and compassionate
man showering unbounded love on his beloved
daughter. Hugo’s Triboulet became Verdi’s title
character in his opera Rigoletto (1851), the
opera that inaugurated his “middle period,” that
monumental transitional period in his
compositional career in which he began to
develop more profound operatic subjects.

Verdi’s immediate triumph with Rigoletto

in 1851 inspired and propelled him forward.

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Almost simultaneously, he began working on
the composition of his next two operas: Il
Trovatore (Premiere in January 1853), and La
Traviata (Premiere in March 1853). As a tribute
to Verdi’s genius, no two operas could be so
distinctly different in character and style. Il
Trovatore is a Romantic melodrama full of
“blood and thunder” musical explosions,
which owes much of its structural provenance
to the early 19

th

century bel canto traditions.

La Traviata is a magical and sublime musical
portrait of a tragic heroine, a bittersweet
symphonic-type of opera that sweeps like an
emotional tide as it conveys powerful moments
of emotional truth in each stage of the heroine’s
tragic plight.

I

l Trovatore is based on the 1836 play, El
Trovador, written by García Gutiérrez, a

renowned early 19

th

century Spanish romantic

playwright. Gutiérrez’s play was extremely
popular and inherently a perfect operatic
subject for Verdi: its flamboyant melodrama
is saturated with fantastic, complicated, and
bizarre incidents, together with extreme
passions of love and noble sacrifice. The
play’s intrigues provided Verdi with an
opportunity to fulfil his new ambitions to inject
novel, unconventional, unusual, and bizarre
themes into his opera stories.

In the Romantic era, most underlying opera

stories never strayed far from established well-
known plays and novels. Thus, many opera
stories during the period were adapted from
recognized great works: Schiller, Shakespeare,
Byron, Hugo, Scott, and Bulwer-Lytton. In
effect, opera stories in the Romantic era were
equivalent to the cinema of a 100 years later:
they satisfied the public’s thirst to have
successful books or plays transformed into a
different medium. Thus, Gutiérrez’s play, a
popular romantic melodrama that overflowed

Il Trovatore Page 22

with consuming passions, as well as
Alexandre Dumas fils’ equally popular novel,
La Dame aux Camélias, became Verdi’s
choices for the underlying stories for the
operas that would follow Rigoletto: Il
Trovatore and La Traviata.

Salvatore Cammarano became Verdi’s

personal choice to write the libretto for Il
Trovatore. He had written the libretti for
Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), and
earlier, Verdi’s own Alzira (1845) and La
Battaglia di Legnano (1849). Verdi
considered Cammarano a quintessential
operatic poet, in particular, a genius with a very
special flair for words: Cammarano was the
poet whom he hoped would later fulfill his life-
long ambition to bring Shakespeare’s King Lear
to the opera stage, a dream that never reached
fruition.

Cammarano’s literary genius skillfully

transformed the Gutiérrez El Trovador play
into a dramatically scintillating opera.
Nevertheless, the final libretto has become one
of the enigmas of the opera world. Many opera
aficionados and critics believe that no study of
Il Trovatore’s complicated plot can make it
coherent or intelligible: it reputedly took Verdi
21 days to complete Il Trovatore, but for
many, an intellient understanding of the story
has become a more time consuming feat.

Part of the difficulty in understanding the

Il Trovatore story arises from Cammarano’s
literary style: the poet relished the opportunity
to add variations and obscurities to the story.
But the real complication is attributed to his
penchant for flowery diction and pompous
prose, a style which owes its origin to the old
fashioned libretto Italiano tradition of the time.
Cammarano’s genius with words created a
language that at times seemed stilted and
monotonous: bells were never bells but “sacred
bronzes”; and midnight was traditionally the

Il Trovatore Page 23

“hour of the dead.” Adding to the later
coherence dilemma of Il Trovatore, many
later English translations of the story have
tended to err and blunder in their translation
and explanation of the plot.

W

hen the curtain rises on Il Trovatore, the
years 1409 and 1410, a murderous civil

war is being fought for the succession to the
Spanish throne. Manrico is the hero of the story:
he is a troubadour, one of those knightly poet-
musicians from Medieval times, the archetype
of courtly love. He is the “son” of the gypsy,
Azucena, and fights for the cause of the
pretender, the Duke of Urgel: the current
Count di Luna leads the armies of King Juan
I of Aragon. Manrico and di Luna, enemies
in war, are also rivals for the hand of Leonora,
a lady-in-waiting to the Queen of Aragon. The
underlying irony and ultimate tragedy of the
story revolves around the fact that these two
men, violent enemies in war and bitter rivals
in love, are unaware that they are brothers.

ll Trovatore is a fantastic horror tale in the

true Gothic genre. As such, its story hinges on
an incident that took place 15 years before
the curtain rises: the execution of the gypsy
Azucena’s mother by the old Count di Luna.
The engine that drives the entire Il Trovatore
melodrama is fueled by Azucena’s revenge
for her mother ’s execution. Azucena’s
character was so dominating in the original
Gutiérrez story that the English stage version
bore the title, The Gypsy’s Vengeance.

In the fifteenth century, the Spanish gypsy

population was a tiny minority that had drifted
from southern France. They were perceived by
society as a detested underclass, stereotyped
and denounced for licentiousness, treason,
and heresy, the kidnapping of children, and a
variety of unholy acts. Likewise, they were

Il Trovatore Page 24

hated and feared for their dark skins, their
silver earrings, and blanket-like garments, and
most of all, for their thievery. The Church
became paranoid with the gypsy population,
considering them sorcerers whose witchcraft
was condemned as heresy and blasphemy.
The Inquisition, created in 1480 (and
abolished some 350 years later in 1834)
persecuted the gypsy population as pagans
and witches; bishops even excommunicated
persons as heretics who let gypsies read their
palms.

The gypsies in the Il Trovatore story,

Manrico, Azucena, and her earlier executed
mother, would automatically have become
victims of those tides of hate where the
supreme punishment for their presumed
sorcery was execution at the stake. The stake
became the highly visible vehicle for
punishment and retribution against
blasphemers: the Czech reformer Jan Hus was
burned in 1415, and Joan of Arc was condemned
as a witch in 1431. According to the Il
Trovatore story’s time-frame, Azucena’s
mother would have gone to the stake in 1394,
15 years before the curtain rises, and
Azucena’s death would have taken place when
the curtain falls in 1410.

The di Luna family in the Il Trovatore story

bear the customary suspicion of gypsies. After
the di Luna infant son became deathly ill, the
old Count was convinced that the child’s illness
was caused by an “evil eye” curse cast on him
by an old gypsy who had been seen nearby. The
gypsy was apprehended, condemned, and
immediately burned alive at the stake.

Her daughter, Azucena, witnessed her

mother ’s horrible execution, became
traumatized and delirious, and heeding her
mother’s last invocation, swore revenge
against the di Luna family. Azucena kidnapped
the sick di Luna infant, intending to exact
retribution by casting him into the smoldering

Il Trovatore Page 25

fire, but in her craze and frenzy of the
moment, she accidentally cast her own son
into the fire. The child whom she would
eventually escape with would actually be the
di Luna infant son, Garzía, the di Luna child
she would rear as her son, Manrico.

However, within this melodrama of

frenzied, irrational passions, there flowers an
almost transcendental love between Manrico
and Leonora: their love fuels a violent rivalry
between Manrico and di Luna for Leonora’s
hand. Nevertheless, the core of the story and
the engine that propels the melodrama, remains
Azucena’s lifelong obsession for vengeance
against the di Luna family: it is the gypsy
daughter ’s resolve which drives the Il
Trovatore to its ultimate, tragic conclusion.

L

eonora and Azucena, Il Trovatore’s principal
female characters, are brilliantly

contrasting characterizations, each of whom
inhabits opposite ends of the human spectrum.

Leonora is the heroine of the story, the

ultimate portrait of a woman capable of
profound love as well as unquestionable
religious faith. However, Leonora becomes a
victim of an incomprehensible and
imperceptible world surrounding her with
violent human hatred and brutality. She faces
that eternal conflict of the sacred vs. the
profane: she forgoes her vows at the convent
when Manrico suddenly appears, and in the end,
she commit suicide by taking poison,
sacrificing her life for her beloved Manrico.

Leonora is a noble heroine trapped in the

conflicts and tensions of her fate and destiny.
Verdi honors her through his sublime music,
providing her with melodies that seem to be
minted from pure musical gold. Leonora’s
music contains aspiring and inspiring qualities
with phrases that are rich, lavish, arching,
and soaring: her Act I aria, Tacea la notte, in

Il Trovatore Page 26

which she describes her first acquaintance
with Manrico; her Act II, Scene 2, Sei Tu
dal ciel, the glorious rescue ensemble; and in
Act IV, D’amor sull’ali rosee, her expression
of undaunted passion for Manrico before she
embarks on her doomed sacrifice.

Azucena is the keystone of the Il Trovatore

melodrama, and without her, the opera could
not exist: Azucena is the engine of vengeance
who drives the entire drama. Even more
profoundly than Leonora, Verdi musically
sculpted the character of Azucena with a
heretofore unknown depth.

Azucena was an entirely new figure in

Verdi’s female gallery of singers: up until Il
Trovatore, Verdi had never made significant use
or exploited the dramatic qualities of the
mezzo-soprano or contralto voice in a principal
role. The introduction of Azucena in Il
Trovatore represents the beginning in a glorious
line of darker female voices: Ulrica in Un Ballo
in Maschera, Eboli in Don Carlo, and Amneris
in Aïda.

Azucena’s bizarre character drives the plot

with her two great passions: her maternal love
for Manrico, and her obsessive passion to
avenge her mother’s execution. Azucena is a
swarthy and ominous character who swaggers
savagely as she recounts the vivid horror of
how her mother was led to execution, and in
her delirium, murdered her own infant son.
The tragedy of the story is that her vengeance
leads her to destroy Manrico, the one being
in the world whom she loves.

Azucena is the counterpart of another

grotesque character whom Verdi had created
only two years earlier in 1851: Rigoletto.
These two Gothic-type characters, Rigoletto
and Azucena, are repulsive outsiders, in many
respects, shocking forces to Verdi’s nineteenth
century audiences, who expected to see only
beautiful heroines and handsome heroes

Il Trovatore Page 27

onstage; villains could be ugly, but they were
only to be presented as secondary figures.

During Verdi’s “middle period,” he was at

a critical turning point in his operatic evolution:
he was seeking more profound
characterization and was willing to stretch the
imagination in his search for the bizarre; he
insisted on making major protagonists out of
Rigoletto, a mocked and cynical hunchback,
as well as Azucena, a reviled and
stereotypically ugly gypsy witch.

These two monstrous characters share

similar evil demons and destinies: Rigoletto
brings about the death of his own daughter,
murdered by the assassin he hired to murder
the Duke of Mantua; Azucena causes the death
of Manrico, the surrogate son she adores, first
by claiming under di Luna’s torture that she is
his mother, and secondly, and more importantly,
by hiding from di Luna the fact that he and
Manrico are actually brothers.

Azucena could have saved Manrico, but

possessed with revenge, she did not: she
becomes the horrible, immoral spirit of
destructive humanity. Rigoletto and Azucena
are, therefore, the male and female faces of
defeated revenge: revenge that ultimately
brings about fatal injustice and tragedy. Both
operas, Rigoletto and Il Trovatore, are
tragedies imbedded with irony. The final
horror for both Rigoletto and Azucena is that
they believe they are exacting justice.
Rigoletto proclaims: Egli è delitto, punizion
so io, “He is crime, I am punishment.”
Azucena, expressing the sinister leitmotif of
Il Trovatore, repeatedly proclaims her dying
mother’s decree: “Mi vendica, “Avenge me.”
Nevertheless, in the end, both see their beloved
children lying dead, the only difference
between them is that Rigoletto probably lives
on in agony, haunted by his misdeed; Azucena
surely died at the stake as did her mother.

Il Trovatore Page 28

T

emperamentally, Verdi was an idealist, a

true son of the Enlightenment, who

possessed a noble conception of humanity.
He abominated absolutism and deified civil
liberty, which ultimately resulted in his lifelong
manifesto and crusade against tyranny;
personal, social, political, or ecclesiastical. His
operas, Don Carlos (1867) and Aïda (1872),
if anything, resound with profound underlying
socio-political statements about the abuse and
corruption of power, and the inherent
impotence it inflicts on humanity.

Verdi was also a pessimist and skeptic who

perceived a cruel and unjust world, irrational,
and hypocritical in its promises of human
progress. Many experiences in his life were
recalled with much bitterness: as an infant, his
mother fled with him to escape vindicating
Russians who were venting their hatred against
Napoleon with blind slaughter; his two children
and young wife died early in his life; his mother
died the year before Il Trovatore; librettist
Cammarano died in the midst of writing the
libretto for Il Trovatore; and many of his noble
social, and political ideals seemed to be
degenerating in fin du siecle Europe.

The characters in Il Trovatore represent

emotionally charged symbols of Verdi’s
pessimistic view an existential and hostile
world. The story possesses no redemptive
values, but rather, a profound and dramatically
truthful portrayal of irrational obsessions,
intense emotions and passions, pathos, and
despair. All the characters suffer intensely:
Manrico/Garzía is a lonely man, doomed to the
cruelty of war but momentarily redeemed
through Leonora’s love; he is executed
without ever knowing his real identity.
Leonora is unable to comprehend the hostility
and violence surrounding her: she sacrifices
herself, preferring a martyred death rather
than the lust-crazed di Luna. Di Luna is
irrational and virtually insane in his insatiable

Il Trovatore Page 29

lust for Leonora, the woman he tries to
possess but cannot: he ultimately transforms
his life into an obsession with hatred which
nurtures the story’s final horror and tragedy:
killing his own brother.

The true tragic character in Il Trovatore

is Azucena, the woman of powerful irrational
passions. She triggers the melodrama’s ultimate
tragedy by killing the man who had indeed
become her son; the son she could have saved
by revealing to di Luna that he was indeed his
brother. For Verdi, Azucena’s persona is the
essence of the underlying story of Il
Trovatore: she is the ultimate symbol of a
universe of cruel creatures; humanity
possessing destructive, irrational powers and
passions.

I

l Trovatore is saturated with melodic vitality,
energetic musical inventions, and an

explosion of eminently beautiful lyricism that
possess a driving, propulsive quality. The
opera’s characterizations are sharp and
contrasting, and together with its super-charged
emotions, it swiftly speeds from climax to
climax.

In retrospect, Il Trovatore is a 150 year old

phenomenon whose impact remains unique
and seemingly eternal in the world of Italian
opera, an overwhelmingly popular and
perennial favorite: of all of Verdi’s output, it
was the most loved opera in his own day.

At the time of Il Trovatore, Richard

Wagner’s theories of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the
ideal of the total artwork, began to infest the
European opera world. Those theories
idealized opera as music drama, a goal that
could be achieved through a synthesis and
fusion of text, music, and all other art forms.
As the second half of the 19

th

century

unfolded, Wagner and his theories eventually
revolutionized the opera art form: his theories

Il Trovatore Page 30

worked well for him; Verdi’s techniques
equally suited his own style as well as those
of his audiences.

Verdi’s Il Trovatore is a score saturated with

bel canto, “oom-pah-pah hit-parade” songs,
“organ grinder” music, and many of its
accompaniments locked to dance rhythms.
Theoretically, Il Trovatore represents the
antithesis of Wagnerism: it was the essence of
an intolerable Italianism in lyric drama, and the
devils were Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and,
of course, Verdi; Wagner was obsessed to
rescue and redeem the world from their
artistic evil. Wagner introduced his music
dramas, the Ring cycle and Tristan and
Isolde. After Il Trovatore, Verdi’s style
progressed and matured to grander levels, and
his operas became more organically unified
in terms of their musical and dramatic
integration. Likewise, the Italian opera school
conceived its own music of the future: the
verismo style of Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and
Puccini.

Il Trovatore represents the end of a

particular era and genre of Italian opera: it is
the last of the great Italian Romantic
melodramas. However, it is a work which
evolved from early and mid-nineteenth century
opera styles: it represents the sum and
substance of Italian opera, because its focus
is voice and song, essential ingredients that
will survive until the whole structure of Italian
opera will have disappeared. Verdi himself
would eventually leave the Il Trovatore style
far behind him and eloquently advance toward
his own indelible musico-dramaticism in his
last four operas: Don Carlo, Aïda, Otello and
Falstaff. Nevertheless, his Il Trovatore
continues to remain a jewel in his operatic
crown.

But the ultimate greatness of Il Trovatore

is that it reverently and piously follows the
great Italian traditions in which the voice,

Il Trovatore Page 31

song, and melody, remain the supreme focus
of the opera. Verdi saturated this score with
unforgettable musical gems, which seem to
become brighter over time: Leonora’s Tacea
la notte, the Anvil Chorus, Azucena’s wild
ballad Stride la vampa, di Luna’s Il balen,
Manrico’s Mal reggendo, and Di quella pira,
and every note of the Tower Scene, Miserere,
and the final Prison Scene. These musical
inventions represent a magnificent legacy
which become imbedded in the mind just as
familiar sentences from literature become
catch-phrases and proverbs.

Since Il Trovatore, new currents and trends

have arisen in opera, and there are certainly
vastly more intelligible and cohesive opera
dramas. Nevertheless, Il Trovatore is firmly
rooted to the opera stage; its devoted audiences
continually hypnotized by the lyric splendor
Verdi provided for his troubadour of Aliaferia
whose serenades and last addio seem to
become engraved in memory not only after
the curtain falls, but for eternity.

Il Trovatore is one of Verdi’s most supreme

lyrical masterpieces, a work without parallel in
the entire operatic canon: a late flowering of
the great Italian romantic tradition. It is
saturated with masterful melodic inventions,
and lush and vividly beautiful music that are
fused with powerful dramatic passion and
power. This virtually unique opera runs like a
thoroughbred, breaks out of the gate, and
charges to the finish line where all of its
romantic agony and Gothic horror unite in
magnificent and thunderous lyric splendor: Il
Trovatore provides the sounds and furies of
towering passions. •

Il Trovatore Page 32