Opera review: 'Il Trovatore'
Published 4:00 am, Monday, September 14, 2009
Even if nothing else happens during the rest of the San Francisco Opera's 2009 fall season, soprano Sondra Radvanovsky has already provided us with at least one extraordinary and indelible musical memory.
It came during the last act of Friday's potent season-opening performance of Verdi's "Il Trovatore" at the War Memorial Opera House, and even in the context of a generally strong evening, Radvanovsky's account of the aria "D'amor sull'ali rosee" stood out as a beacon of probing musicality.
This is a potentially static moment in the opera - Leonora has come to the tower where her sweetheart Manrico is imprisoned and sings there of her love for him - but Radvanovsky turned it into an episode of spiritual incandescence. Melodic phrases began in intimacy, then grew stronger and more intensely heartfelt; by the end, there was no doubt about what it meant for Leonora to give her life for this man.
For that matter, this aria was only the high point of a superb company debut marked by vocal prowess and theatrical clarity. Radvanovsky's tone is at once lush and athletic, and it opens out alluringly in the upper register, so that the climactic points in the role landed with no hint of effort or strain.
And Radvanovsky's contribution in turn was only the high point of a largely engaging and assured performance.
In a splendid near-debut (her first staged appearance after singing the Verdi Requiem here in June), mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe brought her magisterial sound and theatrical resilience to the role of Azucena, the Gypsy torn between vengeance and motherly love. "Stride la vampa," in which she relives the traumatic murder of her own mother, was both musically fastidious and grippingly emotional, and she gave a clear sense throughout of Azucena's unwilling obsessiveness.
Baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky was a somewhat inconsistent Count di Luna - vibrant and engagingly unpredictable in the opera's more active scenes but unfocused in the great lyrical aria "Il balen" - and tenor Marco Berti, after some rough spots in Act 1, produced a husky-toned but energized account of "Di quella pira."
Burak Bilgili was a vocally vague Ferrando, but there were excellent turns by Adler Fellows Andrew Bidlack (Ruiz) and Renée Tatum (Inez), and Ian Robertson's Opera Chorus rose to great heights, especially in the Soldiers' Chorus at the beginning of Act 3.
"Trovatore" also marked the first outing for conductor Nicola Luisotti as music director, and I suspect the fact was on his mind as well. He brought his trademark vivacity to the performance, particularly in his handling of the orchestra, but there was also a surfeit of "look what I can do" - exaggerated shifts in tempo, sudden unmotivated pauses and a habit of sprinting full-out into the final measures of every scene.
David McVicar's production, a co-production with the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Metropolitan Opera that has been staged here by Walter Sutcliffe, takes a traditional line without losing the dramatic thread. Designer Charles Edwards provides a floor-to-ceiling concrete wall that rotates to deftly reveal various settings, and key scenes - most notably the Act 2 invasion of the convent where Leonora is about to take herself off the marriage market - were staged with crisp precision.
San Francisco Opera: "Il Trovatore" plays seven more times. Through Oct. 6. War Memorial Opera House, 301 Van Ness Ave. Tickets: $15-$310. (415) 864-3330, www.sfopera.com.