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The Sunday Times, 7 July 2013 |
Hugh Canning |
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Verdi: Il trovatore, Bayerische Staatsoper, 27.Juni 2013 |
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The big chill
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part of the article |
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At the opposite end of the temperature spectrum, one of the hottest events
of the Verdi bicentenary year — the role debuts of the German “Traumpaar”
(dream team) Jonas Kaufmann and Anja Harteros in Verdi’s fire-and-blood
melodrama Il trovatore — met with an equally equivocal response on the
opening night of Munich’s annual summer festival at the Bavarian State
Opera’s National Theatre: near ecstasy for the singers, a mixture of boos
and bravos for the director, Olivier Py.
Harteros can do no wrong at
Munich’s National Theatre, the centre of her operatic activity, and now
Kaufmann’s “home” house, too. They have already appeared together in a new
production of Wagner’s Lohengrin and a revival of Verdi’s Don Carlo, and in
December they will add another Verdi opera, the tricky La forza del destino,
to their joint repertoire.
The roles of Manrico — the opera’s titular
troubadour — and Leonora are a less perfect fit than Don Carlo and
Elisabetta di Valois, which they recently sang together for one performance
at Covent Garden before Harteros succumbed to a bug. The soprano’s voice has
grown exponentially in recent years, and the bel canto requirements of
Leonora’s two big solo scenes and her duet with her predatory admirer the
Count of Luna (the loud, unsubtle Alexey Markov) sounded negotiated rather
than effortless. At least both she and Kaufmann try to articulate the
gruppetti (little groups of short notes) and trills, and scrupulously
observe Verdi’s dynamic markings.
With his movie-star looks, Kaufmann
was surely born to swashbuckle, but he is a serious and thoughtful artist
and I am not sure Manrico has sufficient depth of character to challenge him
theatrically. The star tenor remains a controversial singer of Italian music
— too veiled and baritonal in timbre for some, but as with his Don Carlo,
the vocal sun eventually comes out in his voice and did so spectacularly in
Manrico’s show-stopper, Di quella pira.
Kaufmann may not have
italianità by birthright, but he has acquired enough of it now, and it is
hard to imagine any of his rivals singing the role with such dark glamour
and musicality.
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