Verdi- Il trovatore (Full Score)

Описание: The score was finished at the end of 1852.

Azucena- Fiorenza Cossotto
Leonora- Leontyne Price
Manrico- Placido Domingo
Conte di Luna- Sherrill Milnes
Ferrando- Baldo Giaiotti
Ines- Elizabeth Bainbridge
Ruiz- Ryland Davies
Un vecchio zingaro- Stanley Riley
Un messo- Neilson Taylor
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Zubin Mehta with the Philharmonia, 1969

"Ma infine nella vita tutto è morte! Cosa esiste?"

Throughout Verdi's early operatic career, Verdi was known to have been particularly demanding on his librettists. Francisco Maria Piave, the poet of Rigoletto, Stiffelio, Ernani, La Traviata, Il Corsaro, I due Foscari, and Macbeth, was known to be Verdi's neglected lapdog; a fine poet whom Verdi overworked and, at times, unfairly criticized. Much has been written about Temistocle Solera's short temper when dealing with Verdi's passive-aggressive attitudes and domineering poetic taste when composing Attila. However, this all shifted whenever Verdi worked with Salvatore Cammarano, the esteemed librettist of bel canto classics like Lucia di Lammermoor, Poliuto, and Roberto Devereux, all with music by Donizetti, Verdi's idol. It can ultimately be said that Verdi's unusual levels of reverence, tolerance, and passivity toward Cammarano had to do with his resumé, even after the failure of Alzira and the exhausting premiere of Luisa Miller.

When Verdi began work on Il Trovatore, his fourth time working with Cammarano, he told him that he wanted the opera to be even more formally fluid and "bizarre" than Stiffelio or Rigoletto, in that there are to be virtually no arias, choruses, trios, or closed forms of any kind, something resembling Verdi's later operas with Boito. Cammarano swiftly ignored all of these requests and produced a rather conservative libretto, one which relied heavily on the cavatina-cabaletta structure so common in Italy at the time. Perhaps out of the aforementioned uncharacteristic respect to the dying librettist, Verdi set the libretto to music without complaint.

Because of this, the opera can be seen not as an opera that is particularly "novel" or "groundbreaking", but one that takes advantage of the present norms in opera so effectively and so perfectly that it can ultimately be considered an unforgettable masterpiece. Verdi places less attention on dramatic flow and more on the music-- the melodies in this opera are some of the greatest that he has ever composed. And the story is intriguing, not as convoluted as people say. If one removes Azucena from the story, they will end up with everything one might expect from an opera at this time-- a doting soprano, involved in a love triangle with a brash, masculine (and very, very stupid) lead tenor, and a "villainous" yet sympathetic baritone. But what magic Azucena adds to the opera!! A darkness, a chiaroscuro that pervades this whole work. I certainly hope that you enjoy this opera as much as I do, one that I favor far more than La Traviata!!!