GIUSEPPE VERDI
IL TROVATORE
CONTENTS
P.
4
SYNOPSIS P.
7
FEELING THE HEAT OF THE SOUTH DANIELE ABBADO IN AN INTERVIEW P.
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BIOGRAPHY SALVADORE CAMMARANO P.
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LET THE TROUBADOUR HAVE HIS STRENGTHS...
P.
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TROVATORE WITH AND WITHOUT A SWORD OLIVER LÁNG P.
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THE REVENGE VIRUS AND ITS ARCHETYPES ROTRAUD A. PERNER P.
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A TRUE STORY KONRAD PAUL LIESSMANN P.
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IMPRINT
GIUSEPPE VERDI
IL TROVATORE OPERA in four parts Libretto SALVADORE CAMMARANO
ORCHESTRA
piccolo / flute 2 oboes / 2 clarinets 2 bassoons / 4 horns 2 trumpets / 3 trombones cimbasso / percussion violin I / violin II viola / cello / double bass 2 horns / small drum organ / harp / bells
STAGE MUSIC
WORLD PREMIÈRE 19 JAN 1853 Teatro Apollo, Rome AUSTRIAN PREMIÈRE 11 MAY 1854 Kärntnertor Theatre PREMIÈRE AT THE HOUSE ON THE RING 21 SEP 1869 Vienna Court Opera DURATION
3H
INCL. 1 INTERMISSION
I L T ROVAT OR E
SYNOPSIS Long ago, the previous Spanish Count di Luna had an old woman burned at the stake because he believed she was responsible for bewitching his younger son, little García. Out of revenge, Azucena, the old woman’s daughter, abducted García. Shortly thereafter, the charred skeleton of a child was found. The old count refused to believe that García was dead and, shortly before he died, made his older son swear never to give up looking for his missing brother. Fifteen years later, civil war was raging in Spain, and the remaining older son – now Count di Luna – had become a soldier. The troubadour Manrico, who believes himself to be Azucena’s son, is fighting for the other side. Manrico and di Luna also find themselves confronting each other in the field of love: both are in love with the lady-in-waiting Leonora, who for her part loves Manrico. One night Leonora hears Manrico singing close by in the palace garden; she runs to meet him. Confused in the dark, she throws herself into the arms of the man whom she recognises too late as Count di Luna. Thus, he finds out that Leonora is in love with Manrico. Manrico also comes running, whereupon di Luna challenges him to duel. Di Luna is defeated, but Manrico spares his life. Sometime later, Manrico is present when Azucena experiences a vision in which she once again lives through the terrible death of her mother at the stake. Half out of her mind, Azucena admits that she vengefully thrust a child into the flames – but through a terrible mistake she burned her own child and not the abducted child. She is however able to allay Manrico’s mounting doubts: he is her son.
Previous pages: SCENE
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SYNOPSIS
When Leonora receives the false report that Manrico was defeated in the duel, she decides to enter a convent. To prevent her from doing so, di Luna plans to kidnap her. However, he is stopped by Manrico, who takes the opportunity to flee with Leonora to Castellor castle, of which he has been appointed commander. When Azucena tries to make her way to Manrico, she is captured by di Luna’s followers. Manrico sets out to free her, but also falls into the hands of his enemy. In despair, Leonora offers herself to di Luna if he will pardon Manrico. Di Luna happily accepts this proposition, little knowing that Leonora has taken poison to avoid having to spend her life with the Count, whom she does not love. She manages to inform her beloved Manrico about his pardon before dying in his arms. Furious, di Luna orders that Manrico be executed. The execution has scarcely taken place when Azucena spits the words at him: “that was your brother.”
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ANDREAS LÁNG IN AN INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR DANIELE ABBADO
FEELING THE HEAT OF THE SOUTH al
There are two aspects of any new production that are of im mediate interest to audiences: where is the production set and in what era? da In short, the answer is: in Spain during a military conflict between nations, in other words to a certain extent as prescribed in the score. However, we have transferred the story from the struggle for succession to the throne in the 15th century to the time of the great Spanish Civil War, in other words in 1936, however without any very concrete historical references. al Why is that? da At first glance it is not easy to pick out the thread that runs through Il trovatore. However, a key aspect that is of course immediately apparent is the relationship between di Luna and Manrico. We have expanded this basic theme of the opera – two brothers at war with each other – to a larger scale, to an entire nation. In reality it is irrelevant that Manrico and di Luna know nothing about their relationship. Anyway, Manrico senses something of this nature, otherwise he would not have KS ANNA NETREBKO as LEONORA
spared di Luna in the duel. And so we set out amongst other things to show the bloody conflict, the far-reaching hatred of two parties who in fact belong together but who fight on senselessly until either one side or both perish. al In this production, all this hap pens on a unit set... da More or less, yes. It is a unit set but one that has different configurations and is constantly redefined with movable scenery pieces. Depending on the situation, it can therefore represent a church, military camp, prison, castle or palace garden. The model for our set was the interior of a destroyed church and the restaurant of a deserted grand hotel, the enormous carpet in which we deliberately referenced. al You say that the production has no concrete historic references. Di Luna is not explicitly a Franco supporter, then? da No, I wouldn’t state that so defini tively. Di Luna and his men are recognisable from their costumes as soldiers. Manrico, Azucena and the gitanos on the other hand belong to armed partisan organisations.
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DANIELE ABBADO IN AN INTERVIEW
al
Why is this opera so popular with audiences, although critics accuse it of being shallow? da It’s true that Il trovatore is not an innovative work in terms of neither the drama or the music, especially not when compared to the two other pieces in the trilogia populare, i.e. Rigoletto and Traviata. Both Violetta and the hunchbacked court jester are capable of reflection; they can think about themselves and their relationship with the world, even though they make mistakes in their logic, especially Rigoletto. There is nothing like that in Il trovatore. Here, Verdi and Cammarano present archetypes, such as the heroic tenor and the angelic soprano. You may criticise that, but I don’t understand why. Where is it written that a work must be innovative to be good quality? Verdi’s intention with Il trovatore was clearly to develop situations based on the moment. What was important to him was the atmosphere, the mood, and in that he succeeded brilliantly, thanks to his tremendous feeling for and skill in theatre. This also explains why Il trovatore seems not to follow a logical, continuous plot that is intricately interconnected, but is instead a series of scenes. al Does that mean that in this case a director must come up with concepts based on his intuition? da It is at least important to trust your instincts with a work like this. al Verdi originally wanted to make Azucena the focal point of the storyline, but ultimately Leo nora took this position. da Strictly speaking, Azucena is still the main driver of the work, particularly since she holds the key to all the relationships and secrets. Besides her, no one understands the tragic quid
pro quo of the plot. But even apart from that, this character is extremely interesting to a director. For one thing, with the stories they tell, she and Ferrando together form the link to past events and therefore to the past. For another, questions arise about her motives. She is clearly acting on the orders of someone else, namely her mother’s “avenge me,” and passes this subjection to another’s will directly on to Manrico with the words “defend your mother.” In this aspect, she is related to Rigoletto or Germont, who also tried to manipulate their children. Is Azucena’s selfaffirmed motherly love simply a form of carrying out her mother’s command to her? Are we dealing with a MimeSiegfried relationship with Azucena and Manrico? What kind of person would burn her own child in a delirium and then, tormented by the deed, bring up the child of her mother’s murderer? Is it even true that Manrico is di Luna’s brother? Inspired by Luciano Berio’s La vera storia, I too ask where the truth lies. What if Azucena burned the other child and brought up her own son, just so that when she next encountered di Luna she could hurl the famous words “he was your brother” at him? In short: there can be no question of Azucena sinking to the level of an unexciting minor character in the opera. al Let’s talk about the other side. How do things stand with di Luna? Is he the typical Verdi villain à la grand inquisitor? da No, not at all. The grand inquisitor is cunning, intelligent, a strategist. Di Luna’s actions, on the other hand, are almost primitive, emotional and thoughtless. Wanting to abduct Leo nora just before she enters a convent for example is not a very subtle, intelli-
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FEELING THE HEAT OF THE SOUTH
gent idea. His main strength lies in his attitude of “I know who I am and what I want.” In this he different from Manrico, incidentally, whose sense of identity is shaken by Azucena’s story. al Verdi talked about the tinta, the atmospheric colour of his operas. What colour is Il trovatore? da Without doubt, Il trovatore is a dark piece. Nevertheless I want to try and get away from the traditional images and convey some of the warmth, the heat of the south, which influences people’s emotions and therefore their behaviour in no small measure. al In terms of the story, Verdi and Cammarano were accused of putting an anachronistic char acter on the stage in the figure of the troubadour, since in the orig inal era of the opera minstrels of this kind no longer existed. da The accusation is somewhat phili stine. If you look at opera history, the plots are full of historical aberrations and errors. For me, Manrico is a young man with obvious leadership qualities, who can lead military conflicts, but who also possesses an artistic vein. In times of peace, he could have had or had a career as a singer, of whatever kind. Accordingly, his premature death will glorify him, similar to a Jeff Buckley. At all events, this singer/warrior radiates greater appeal than di Luna, who due to his lack of artistic talent loses his nerves when he simply hears the voice of his rival. al In the production, a procession and a statue of Mary play a cer tain role...
da The plot of Il trovatore suggests a religious background against which the characters move about. I wanted to illustrate this with a device that symbolically documents the link that binds the two warring parties. So we regularly quote the procession you mention, which is drawn from an Andalusian tradition still existing today; one might describe it best as Madonna theft or Mary theft. Following this tradition, every seven years the miracle-working statue of Mary in front of the altar in a small village church is stolen by a huge crowd of people and taken to a larger town ten kilometres away in a very festive procession that lasts 24 hours. What fascinates me about this procession is the almost trance-like love of the people who compete to carry the Madonna or at least be allowed to touch it. al Does this production try to con vey a message? Can Il trovatore even convey a message to the au dience? da In my view, the message in all opera literature is always the piece itself and the intention of the composer and the librettist – certainly not the personal signature of a director. A director is not a Giorgio Armano or Kenzo. A director must draw new aspects out of the work. He can make certain meanings and relationships clear; however, he is not a co-creator of the piece, he is an interpreter. He is, and I learned this from Giorgio Strehler, the last among the performers and the first among the audience: a link between stage and auditorium. The interview took place in 2017
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BIOGRAPHY SALVADORE CAMMARANO Salvadore Cammarano was wellknown, popular, industrious – yet his entire life he never managed to raise himself out of poverty. An honest, good-natured man who – quite unlike for example the somewhat older, wily Felice Romani – did not differentiate between the unknown, mediocre composers and the celebrated tone-smiths à la Donizetti or Verdi and accordingly tried to write a high-quality libretto for everyone. Cammarano was a theatre person to the core of his being. Born into a theatre family originally from Sicily but living in Naples, he was familiar with the profession from the beginning. To a certain extent it was his home, he moved very securely around this terrain, and his feeling for theatre practice was correspondingly strong. Perhaps it would be an overestimation to call him a genius, but he came very close to this with his best libretti. He did not initially follow the path of a librettist, but underwent training as a painter and sculptor. After this detour (which gave him a great deal of experience for his later additional career as a director), Cammarano tried his hand as a playwright, writing primarily comedies with melancholic interludes. The decisive moment came when, at around 30, he was appointed poet
and director to the Royal Theatres in Naples, and from this point on he was to produce libretti. His successful first collaboration with Donizetti, for whom he wrote the libretto to Lucia di Lammermoor, finally attracted general attention. From then on, his name meant something in the opera world, and the Mercadantes, Pacinis, Donizettis, Verdis and whatever else their names may have been trusted his judgement and his ability almost blindly. It was not without reason that Verdi originally wanted to write the Lear he never composed together with Cammarano. Cammarano’s libretti generally focused on women rather than men, although for the most part strict character development was less important to Cammarano than impfactful effects. Apart from historic themes, he worked mainly on gothic romances: mystically entangled plot lines, passionate villains, complex back stories that are only revealed to the audience gradually over the course of the story – these were the ingredients in Cammarano’s libretti. Incidentally, he also paid close attention to writing language of very high quality. When at the age of 51 he died suddenly in 1852, after a short illness (while working on Il trovatore), he unquestionably left a noticeable gap in the Italian opera scene.
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LUDOVIC TÉZIER as COUNT LUNA
LET THE TROUBADOUR HAVE HIS STRENGTHS... LETTER FROM VERDI TO IL TROVATORE LIBRETTIST CAMMARANO After reading the Spanish play El trovador, Verdi won Salva dore Cammarano’s agreement to write his libretto for the opera. When Cammarano sent Verdi his first draft, the composer seemed disappointed and responded as follows.
Busseto, 9 April 1851 Dear Cammarano, I have read your draft. As a man of such superior talent and character, you will not take it amiss if I, who am unworthy of the task, take the liberty of telling you that it would be better to give up this story if it cannot be written for our stages with all the novelty and bizarreness of the Spanish drama. It seems to me, if I am not mistaken, that a number of situations no longer have the power and uniqueness that they did before, and above all that Azucena has not retained her strange, novel character. It also seems to me that the two great passions of this woman – love for her child and motherly love – are no longer present in all their potency. For example, I would not want the troubadour to be wounded in the duel. This poor troubadour has so little merit; if we rob him of his strength, what is left for him? How could he be of interest the noble-born Leonora? I would not want Azucena to tell her story to the gitanos and for her to say in the act 3 ensemble: “your son was burned alive
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L E T T H E T RO U B A D O U R H AV E HIS STRENGTHS...
etc. etc... But I was not there etc. etc.” And finally I do not want her to be mad at the end. I wish you had kept the grand aria!! Leonora does not take part in the funeral song and the troubadour’s canzone – and this seems to be to be the best place for an aria. If you are afraid of making the role of Leonora too big, omit the cavatina. To explain more clearly, I will describe in detail how I see this storyline.
PART 1 – PROLOGUE 1. The chorus and introductory narrative are good. Cut Leonora’s cavatina and write a 2. grand trio starting with di Luna’s recitative, troubadour’s canzone, scene with Leonora, trio and challenge, etc. etc.
PART 2 Gitanos, Azucena and the troubadour who has been wounded in battle. 3. Gitanos sing a strangely fantastic chorus. While they are drinking, Azucena strikes up a melancholic song. The gitanos interrupt her because it is too tragic. “Just as tragic as the story that gave rise to it!” “You do not know it...” (You will be avenged!) These words shake the troubadour who until then has remained deep in thought. Morning breaks and the gitanos disperse into the mountains, repeating a verse of the chorus as they go. The troubadour remains alone with this mother and asks her to tell him the story that has so horrified him. Story etc. Duet with Manrico in free and new forms. 4. D uet with Manrico. It doesn‘t seem right to me for Azucena to tell her story in the presence of the gitanos; a few words escape her to the effect that she kidnapped the son of di Luna, and that she has sworn to avenge her mother. 5. Scene of the nun’s investiture, etc. etc. and finale
PART 3 6. Di Luna chorus and romance 7. Ensemble. The dialogue or interrogation in the Spanish drama emphasises the character of the gitana. If, however, Azucena reveals herself for what she is, she is delivering herself immediately into her
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LETTER
enemy’s hands and robbing herself of her means for revenge. It is good that Ferrando makes the count suspicious and that the count, who calls himself di Luna, causes Azucena to become agitated. This causes Ferrando to recognise her; she does not give herself away, other than with the words that escape her: “be silent, for if he knows it, he will kill me!” Azucena’s word are very simple and beautiful: “Where are you going? I don’t know. I lived in the mountains; I had a son. He left me. I am going to look for him...” 8. Recitative Leonora. Recitative and Manrico’s dream narrative, then 9. Duet between him and Leonora. He reveals to his betrothed that he is the son of a gitana. Ruiz announces that his mother is in prison. He rushes off to save her etc.
PART 4 10. Big aria for Leonora, interspersed with the song of the dying and the troubadour’s canzone. 11. Duet Leonora – di Luna 12. Do not make Azucena go mad. Exhausted by fatigue, pain, horror, watching, she cannot speak straight. Her senses are paralysed, but she has not lost her mind. The two great passions of this woman must persist to the last: her love for Manrico and her fervent desire to avenge her mother. When Manrico is dead, her desire for revenge is vast, and in a state of great excitement she says: “Yes ... that was your brother ... You fool! Mother, you are avenged!” Please forgive my boldness. I know this was not right, but I couldn’t do anything other than tell you what I was thinking. Incidentally, my original speculation that this drama might not appeal to you has perhaps now been confirmed. If that is the case, we have time to come up with a remedy. I would rather that than to do something that did not appeal to you. I have another story to hand: simple, engaging and, one might say, almost finished. If you wish, I can send it to you and we won’t think about the troubadour any more.
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L E T T H E T RO U B A D O U R H AV E HIS STRENGTHS...
Just write me a word. And if you have a story of your own, let me know. Addio, addio, my dear Cammarano! Write to me soon and believe me that I shall be obliged to you for my entire life. Cordially yours, Giuseppe Verdi
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Following pages: KS ROBERTO ALAGNA as MANRICO
OLIVER LÁNG
TROVATORE WITH AND WITHOUT A SWORD THE OPERA HOUSE ON THE RING No, we can’t compete with the USA. Not when it comes to celebrating. For example: On 15 June 1869 tens of thousands of people gathered in Boston for the National Peace Jubilee, to play and hear the great hits from music history. The highlight: the so-called “Anvil Chorus” from Il trovatore, for which a hundred blacksmiths, along with the requisite number of anvils, were brought in just for the event. All the Viennese reviewer present at the event could do was rhapsodise: “in all my life, I shall never forget the scene when the 11,000 singers and 1,000 musicians struck up the chorus, accompanied by the anvil blows by the hundred blacksmiths, whose bare, muscular arms and red flannel shirts stood out in sharp contrast to the black tail coats around them.” In old Europe, in old Vienna at the same time the scale was rather smaller. Such as a small advertisement in
a music shop read “The most popular operas of the day: Robert, Norma, Stradella, Fille du régiment, Hugenots, Trovatore, Stumme, Freischütz, Rigoletto, Bluebeard, Faust, Martha. All 12 for just 5fl. 75kf.” In other words, Trovatore for domestic use, in the form of an opera album. And correctly apostrophised as one of the most notable operas of its day. A few days later another announcement, this time the first live Trovatore performance at the new opera house on the Ring: Saturday, 18 September 1869 is the date, the cast is already known and printed in the newspaper. But then. But then the tenor and the soprano fall ill, and the management hastily postpones the first performance. The new date is to be Tuesday, 21 September. And yes, the tenor is healthy and ready to perform on this day. But the soprano is still experiencing health problems.
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T ROVAT OR E W I T H A N D W I T HOU T A S WOR D
CANCEL? POSTPONE? The problem is solved with a change in cast; instead of Court Opera regular Marie Wilt, a relatively unknown singer gets into the game. (E)Leonore Hahn, Edle von Hahnenheim, born in Vienna, seen at the Court Opera to date as Mathilde in Guillaume Tell. She sings Leonora, evidently with grace, but with little fire and little dramatic depth, and very “German.” At least according to one reviewer. At all events, the first of to date 646 Trovatores had taken place at the house on the Ring. Leonore Hahn on the other hand never sang at the Vienna Court Opera again. For the record, Trovatore was the eighth work and the first opera by an Italian composer to be performed in the new opera house. So, now Verdi as well.
ALTHOUGH... Although he is listed on the programme as Josef Verdi and the opera – naturally because that was normal at the time – was performed in German. The translation was by Heinrich Proch, a Viennese violinist, conductor and composer. The opera was shortened and various different ballets inserted in Part 3, such as Franz Doppler’s Soldatentanz, choreographed by ballet director Paul Taglioni. And there were complaints. Troubadour was more effective at the old house, the Kärntnertor Theatre. The singers came across better in the old house. And the costumes for the opera, the sets by royal and imperial Court Theatre painter Theodor Jachimowicz, are stylistically questionable, garish, clut-
tered and enigmatic. And wrong! For example, the moon was shining down behind the trees, but the trees were obviously lit from the front. – Such were theatrical problems in 1869... So reviews were written. They complained. The opera director was put on notice. It was better at the old house. The initial momentum at the new house was already waning. The orchestra blundered. And Trovatore performances continued... Five more times that year, and exactly 151 times until the turn of the century. From 1860 to 1944, the opera was on the schedule 382 times, and in that three-quarters of a century there were only three years when it was not performed: 1898, 1899 and 1907. After 1944 there is a short break. In 1951 the opera appears on the schedule again, in the temporary quarters at the Theater an der Wien. In 1956, it moves to the rebuilt Wiener Staats oper, where it is heard a total of 264 times until 2001. And then another break, this time of sixteen years. With this number of performances, how can one even begin to report on the casts? Especially since the greatest conductors and singers were involved. In highlights! Gustav Mahler, Court Opera director from 1897 to 1907, conducted this opera only once, namely on 9 November 1900, and at that without any great response in Vienna’s newspapers. Things were no different for his pupil Bruno Walter, who also stepped onto the podium to conduct Trovatore only once. And while we are talking about conductors who conducted the opera just once: Clemens Krauss, Felix von
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OLIVER LÁNG
Weingartner, Rudolf Kempe and Nello Santi did not get beyond their first Trovatore performance. Franz Schalk, Josef Krips, Giuseppe Patané, Argeo Quadri, Hugo Reichenberger, Berislav Klobučar, Alberto Erede, Horst Stein, Miltiades Caridis, and Charles Mackerras achieved higher numbers. To these names should be added première conductors: 1937 Carl Alwin; 1943 Rudolf Moralt; 1951 Mario Rossi; 1963 Herbert von Karajan; 1993 Zubin Mehta, and 2017 Marco Armiliato. Carl Alwin, who was expelled by the National Socialists, conducted the greatest number of Trovatore performances: 61 in all! Some singers achieved a similar number of performances. In the early years Maria Wilt almost always performed Leonora (58 times), Louis von Bignio, the first di Luna at the house on the Ring, sang the role 64 times starting in 1869, Georg Müller sang Manrico 57 times (initially alternating with Karl Adams). – It is evident that Vienna Court Opera audiences of the day did not experience much variety in their casts. Subsequent Leonoras were Marie Lehmann, Antonie Schläger, Maria Németh and Selma Kurz (52 times). Fritz Schrödter (35 times) and Leo Slezak (47 times) were almost permanent Manricos. And while we are looking at records: Viennese bass August Hablawetz sang Ferrando 108 times between 1871 and 1892. Given his 2,636 appearances in 23 years of service at the opera house on the Ring, that is just one of many impressive numbers. Helge Roswaenge portrayed Manrico from 1932 on, Jussi Björling’s longawaited début in this role at the house on the Ring came in 1936 (he sang in Swedish!). On 22 February 1922 the time
had arrived: “Josef Verdi” appeared on the Trovatore programme for the last time, and from March 1922 he was allowed to be called “Giuseppe.” However, the opera was still performed in German, until Karajan. At the première in 1937 in addition to Maria Németh (Leonora), Alexander Svéd (di Luna) and Rosette Anday (Azucena), the tenors Jan Kiepura and Anton Dermota were heard as Manrico and Ruiz respectively. The next première took place just six years later, this time with Hilde Konetzni as Leonora and Roswaenge as Manrico. The list of renowned singers continues: starting in 1951, Ljuba Welitsch and Hilde Zadek sang Leonora, Elisabeth Höngen Azucena, Roswaenge, Rudolf Schock, and Josef Gostič Manrico, Theo Baylé di Luna – and Walter Berry the messenger, all at the Theater an der Wien. The era of great casts was added to by Herbert von Karajan, who as director of the opera house produced his Salzburg Trovatore in Vienna (as director and musical director!) to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Verdi’s birth in 1963. The Leonoras in this production (which ran until 1991) included Ilva Ligabue, Montserrat Caballé, Gwyneth Jones, Leontyne Price, Lotte Rysanek, Mara Zampieri, Éva Marton and Raina Kabaivanska. Franco Corelli, Carlo Bergonzi, Plácido Domingo, James King, Luciano Pavarotti and Giuseppe Giacomini were celebrated Manricos, Ettore Bastianini, Piero Cappuccilli, Eberhard Waechter, Aldo Protti, Giuseppe Taddei, Wolfgang Brendel and Leo Nucci some of the di Lunas, Grace Bumbry, Fiorenza Cossotto, Giulietta Simionato, Christa Ludwig, Elena Obraztsova and others portrayed Azucena.
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T ROVAT OR E W I T H A N D W I T HOU T A S WOR D
And in 1993? At this première – the renowned Hungarian (film) director István Szabó had set the action in postwar Vienna – Cheryl Studer sang Leo nora, Frederic Kalt was Manrico, Agnes Baltsa sang Azucena, Sergei Leiferkus di Luna and Kurt Rydl was seen as Ferrando. In 2017, the current production celebrated its première with Anna Netrebko, Roberto Alagna, Luciana D’Intino and Ludovic Tézier, among others.
But something is missing. It is the best-known Viennese Trovatore story, about Franco Bonisolli, who when singing the aria “Ah! si, ben mio” at the public dress rehearsal in 1978 – under Karajan – lost his nerve, threw down his sword and abruptly left the stage. And Karajan had to finish the stretta entirely without Manrico. Another little piece of opera history...
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Following pages: SCENE KS ANNA NETREBKO as LEONORA
ROTRAUD A. PERNER
THE REVENGE VIRUS AND ITS ARCHETYPES Just as there is a physical immune system, there is also a mental immune system. When that system is strong, thoughts of revenge can be identified the moment they surface. Physically and mentally, you notice the reaction issuing from the bottom of your soul: “I won’t stand for that – you will pay for that!” or “Who do you think are are dealing with! I’ll show you!” or even just “You wait – revenge is sweet!”... And then on further consideration you stop yourself from doing something rash that could in the long term place you in a series of dangerous situations or land you in front of a court or deliver you to the gravedigger. Varying with the physical/mental dynamics, besides this spontaneous desire for revenge immediately following injury to one’s self-esteem (such as humiliation or spurned love), I discern often lasting obsessive thoughts focusing on repairing the damage to one’s selfesteem as well as a third form, namely coolly planned revenge stemming from an unmet need for dominance, as has in many cases been the underlying mo-
tive in blood revenge. The blood of the murder victim therefore only came to rest in the grave once the imbalance had been corrected through analogous bloodshed. This kind of atonement ritual often required deceitful planning accompanied by further counter-reactions and so formed the basis for many “endless stories.”
THE AVENGER ARCHETYPE In classical antiquity blood feuds were often considered a religious obligation towards the murder victim and are still found in pre-modern cultures, even though they are officially banned. Men are more at risk than women, since the avenger archetype is kept alive not only in old myths, sagas and legends but also in comparable contemporary accounts in films, television and also in operas. Varying with place and time, men have often found themselves in a kind of cultural straitjacket. If they tolerated an injustice – which is one of the possible reactions – they were damaging
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THE REVENGE VIRUS AND ITS ARCHETYPES
the heroic idol of masculinity and were despised as weaklings. Women by contrast were traditionally expected to respond with tolerance and submission; in fact, this was even demanded of them. If a woman deviated from this prescribed “be depressed!” ideal, she was considered to be a lunatic, a criminal or a witch, at best “in need of correction” and landed in a convent, a welfare institution or, if she succeeded in escaping these “adjustments”, on the street. At present, offshoots of this older form of vigilantism are found in “justified indignation” as a possible, acceptable attempt at justification when someone of either sex spontaneously, in other words on the spot, violates one’s selfdefence system, or even just propriety and customs, with an act of violence. What is critical is the temporal immediacy. Wives who have been abused for years but who in a sudden fit of boldness send their sleeping tormentor to the beyond have never escaped the Austrian judiciary with this argument.
THE ARCHETYPAL THEME OF FEUDING BROTHERS Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology Carl Gustav Jung (1875 – 1961) described archetypes as prototypes of the soul – in other words behaviours or behavioural patterns observed time and again in everyday life. They can be found in the myths as quasipsychology textbooks for all cultures and interest or touch us emotionally because we know them only too well in our own life. That which is too distant from us on the other hand barely arouses attention... Anyone who has siblings (or finds themselves outside the genealogical
family in a quasi-sibling competition situation) knows the many conflict situations that result from sibling rivalry: who can do what, who is allowed what, who has what place in the family ranking, who can winkle out an advantage, a privilege from where, who has the more reputable career, who wins the better-looking partner (or can force out the other from their relationship). In some cases siblings oppose each other in political rivalries – and in dictatorships this can become life-threatening even today. I call this the “Cain & Abel Syndrome”. Instead of uniting to complement each other (fraternizing), consensus is achieved by eliminating the other person. Competition and rivalry are survival techniques, but forming a coalition is a cultural achievement. It demands pro-social thought processes and the strength of self-assertion in the face of those who do not want to accept intellectual conflict solutions instead of archaically more brutal solutions. In the themes in world literature we find these constellations are open struggles especially in the royal dramas. We find them as ideological fraternal rivalry such as in Schiller’s The Robbers. However, they are particularly dramatic in cases where the rivals do not know that they are brothers, such as in the films Scaramouche (1952 with Stewart Granger and Mel Ferrer as the unwitting brothers) and The Vikings (1958 with Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas as the hostile half-brothers). While the “troubadour” Manrico seems to be resistant to the revenge virus, Count di Luna proves to be highly infectious: the unexplained story of the supposed curse on the child, child abduction and child murder of his
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ROTRAUD A. PERNER
younger brother clouds his soul in an unconscious demand for retaliation independently from his love troubles of being rejected by his beloved Leonora. A trigger lies in the voice of his successful rival Manrico.
THE SINGER ARCHETYPE Long before we all react to what we see, we hear sounds – even in the womb. Newborns have an excellent sense of smell and taste that diminishes as sensory perception shifts more to hearing, listening and consequently obeying. Looking only becomes dominant much later, and then only if it is motivated by many visual prompts. (This explains the phenomenon that adults also block out certain viewpoints that are not repeatedly suggested.) Music and therefore singing too put us in a certain mood. This is the case not only with the courting wood grouse and other animals, but also explains the sexual prowess of some men who are, at first glance, unremarkable. It is not the professional strength of a politician, such as Henry Kissinger, than makes him attractive, but the strength of his voice. And it is not the pitch of the singing voice, but the openness or relaxation embodied in it that causes listeners to soften (or grow jealous). For this reason, generally speaking deeper voices are found to be more pleasant, more intimate, more erotic. During a tender exchange, not only do the pupils and blood vessels expand, the muscles do too (“weak knees”), and that can be heard in the timbre of the voice. And it can be learned – a clear competitive advantage for all those with trained voices (marriage imposters included).
The singer (no matter which sex) also belongs to the archetype of the shaman: they were healers, naturalists, teachers, judges but also actors, singers and dancers, and they were often even the equally powerful, peaceful counterpart to the warrior king. They could “enchant” people with their voice – both positively and negatively. That could trigger the need for dominance in people, but also envy. Envy very often obscures the feeling of being discriminated against. We need only think of Cain, who could not bear the fact that his father figure God evidently drew the smoke from his brother’s sacrifice straight up heavenward. Chronic envy can quickly turn into a broader need for taking revenge – not only on the person one has been eyeing, but also on society as a whole.
THE DESTRUCTIVE MOTHER ARCHETYPE Envy also arises from the perception that someone seems to be receiving preferential treatment over one’s own needs – brother, sister, husband, wife, father, mother. For example, fathers are often jealous of the relationship their children have with their mother or women envy the professional/social opportunities their partner has. Siblings too react sensitively from a very young age when they suspect unequal treatment, until they are ordered to stop complaining. They often feel – quite rightly – that their younger siblings receive preferential treatment, perhaps because they look particularly like the parent, or because they are more needy (which at least initially is the result of the age difference) or more talented (and there-
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THE REVENGE VIRUS AND ITS ARCHETYPES
fore give the parents more “narcissistic feedback”) or are simply easier to care for. For example in Genesis 36, Rebecca preferred her second-born son Jacob (who was born after his twin brother and came out grasping his brother’s heel) over her first-born Esau. She very deviously cheated him of his blind father’s blessing. Medea, daughter of the king of Colchis, was even more destructive. She killed both her sons when her unfaithful husband Jason, who she had helped steal the Golden Fleece, left her for the Corinthian king’s daughter, Creusa. The sorceress Morgan did even worse, deceiving her unsuspecting brother Arthur in order to become pregnant by him so that their mutual son Mordred could kill his father and win back the throne for her.
THE SYMPTOMS OF THE DISEASE OF REVENGE What I am calling the disease of revenge can be ascribed to a persecution mania. In passive form, it consists of obsessive thoughts, feelings of being deceived, discriminated against, bullied,
persecuted or otherwise threatened. Often this is in fact the case (but is unfortunately not taken seriously). In active form, it establishes a goal of a possible release: if the cue for the gnawing need for revenge would disappear, so it is imagined, everything would be harmonious. In the opera Il trovatore two “healthy” characters – the couple Leonora and Manrico – are confronted with two sick characters – Azucena and Count di Luna. While Azucena’s traumatised state quickly becomes evident, Count di Luna seems to be taking on the rebels purely on a sovereign level. We realise only later that the demon of private revenge is at work in him – too late for the lovers to escape. However, love is stronger than death. It cannot be intimidated by death threats. Count di Luna only becomes aware of this when he alone is left on the “battlefield.” “Yet I must live!” – even without the missing brother. However, whether Manrico was truly the abducted child of the count, or whether this claim is simply the final blow in Azucena’s revenge is never proved.
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Following pages: ROBERTO FRONTALI as COUNT LUNA LUCIANA D’INTINO as AZUCENA
KON R A D PAU L LIE S SM A N N
A TRUE STORY AZUCENA AND THE LOGIC OF REVENGE Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Il trovatore begins with a classic rhetorical opening: The followers of Count di Luna ask their captain Ferrando to tell them the “true story” of García, the count’s brother. Anyone who asks to hear a true story knows that the story is not necessarily guaranteed to be true, and it is precisely for this reason that they insist on hearing that particular story. But why should the story even be told? The philosopher Hans Blumenberg once pointed out that there are only two reasons for telling stories: with storytelling, we either want to quell our fears or pass the time. On the face of it, the latter applies to the count’s followers and soldiers. They have to stay awake and wait for the count. They are tired, and the story will make the long night shorter. In reality, however, there is an undercurrent of fear. They suspect that a deadly clash between the count and the troubadour could be in the offing, fed by the “venomous serpents” of jealousy. The “true story” stokes this fear even further, because it is about a dreadful, uncanny event, but it also allays this fear: the spoken is less terrifying than the unspoken. But when is such a story not true? In general we do not trust the captain’s story, and it is this distrust on which a
good part of the tragedy of unfolding events rests. A nameless old gitana who is believed to have evil magic powers is said to have bewitched one of the children of Count di Luna. She is seized and burned at the stake. Her daughter, Azucena, avenges the death of her mother by stealing the child and burning it. At least, the charred skeleton of a child is found at the site where the supposed witch was delivered to the flames. The old count’s belief that his child is still alive, despite all evidence to the contrary, cannot be confirmed before his death. The followers and soldiers are horror-struck; the child murderer was never captured, and rumour has it that her mother’s ghost still flies at night. The story has its effect. It breeds fear and keeps it at bay. The time spent waiting has passed quickly. But what in fact did happen? And is the curse for revenge still at work, across generations? Philosopher Peter Sloterdijk made the remark that people seeking revenge do not for the time being suffer from a sense of purposelessness. Revenge is not the immediate eruption of a vehement feeling like rage or hate, which can also quickly vanish or die down. Revenge has a goal, a task, to which everything else in life is secondary, all
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A TRUE STORY
other emotions, all thoughts, all truth. Revenge is not subsumed in a spontaneous strong affect, but transforms this affect into a planning, calculating, absurd logic that spans time, sometimes generations. Revenge, one might exaggeratedly say, is the first all-encompassing future project. He who wants revenge must be able to wait. He who wants revenge must have patience. He who wants revenge must make sacrifices. Azucena, the mysterious gitana in Giuseppe Verdi’s Il trovatore, is intent on just such a project of revenge. After all, this was the last command given her by her dying mother. Verdi’s opera has seldom been seen and heard as a contribution to the logic of revenge. Generally, analyses focus on the complex, sometimes confused and confusing erotic and political relationships, and the psychology of the protagonists, the social difference between the nobility and the travelling people dominate interpretations. The character of Azucena and her ambivalence become clearer and more poignant when one considers the extent to which she subjugates everything – her relationship with Manrico and with his real or supposed brother as well as the love of these two men for Leonora – to her plan for revenge. What had really happened? And what aspect of what happened justifies her revenge? Only one person knows the truth: Azucena. She holds the threads of memory in her hand, and whether or not we trust her also determines the dramatic heart of this opera. However, Azucena does not make it easy for us. Her “sad story” has already become part of a ritual gitano song, only her son Manrico does not yet know the background to it. Azucena reveals
her truth to Manrico, and this truth is no less terrible than the captain’s story, with which it largely corresponds. She hears the call of her dying mother, the command to seek revenge, she obeys it, steals the count’s son, sees the flames blazing, becomes confused, and thrusts the – not “the” but rather “a” child into the flames, comes to her senses again and see the count’s son before her. She has sacrificed her own child. “I burned my own son.” Manrico immediately draws the right conclusion: “I am not your son? ... Who am I then?” Azucena reassures him: “you are my son” and offers an explanation for her terrible tale. “When I remember those terrible events, my confused mind causes me to say foolish things.” How confused was Azucena really when she tried to avenge her mother? And how confused was she really when she admitted to Manrico that she picked the wrong child? Basically we have no idea. In a letter to his librettist, Salvadore Cammarano, Giuseppe Verdi demanded that Azucena not go mad, that the two “great passions” of this woman – her love for Manrico and her thirst for revenge – should persist to the end. “Her senses are paralysed, but she has not lost her mind.” When and to whom Azucena had told the truth also cannot be determined from the gitana’s psychological vindication. In our understanding and interpretation of this opera, we are generally guided by what Azucena would have had the hated Count di Luna believe: that at the end with his enemy and rival he had executed his own brother. Azucena’s revenge lies in disclosing this truth. This truth is her revenge. The knowledge of this truth should torment Count di Luna until the end of his days. All the others
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KON R A D PAU L LIE S SM A N N
are dead: “yet I must live.” These are the last words in the opera. It is questionable whether this interpretation in fact makes sense. Naturally Azucena’s desire for revenge seems understandable to us; after all, her mother suffered a terrible injustice. The sympathetic portrayal of her people by Verdi, the mix of cosmopolitanism and rebellion that is expressed in it, do not leave room for the question of what it was that Azucena’s mother did to make the old count persecute her. Our sympathy goes out to the outsiders, and we simply do not believe the captain’s assurance that the old woman had done harm to the count’s child. But why did the old gitana lean over the child to divine its future? Does this gesture not also indicate a claim to power over the life of a person that is anything but natural? And was not the future of them all fatally predetermined by this gesture that was demonized as an act of bedevilment? Was there some history between the old count and the old gitana? Apart from the anachronisms in this scene – in the 15th century, in which the story is set, there were neither gitanos nor the burning of witches in Spain – it reveals an ambiguity that will be perpetuated in the daughter and her revenge. Could it not be that Azucena throws her own child into the flames because subconsciously she is aware of the injustice of this act and atonement is already effected with the crime? But this atonement voided her entitlement to revenge, which must now be put off and is carried over to the count’s son, whom she has brought up since he was a child. Was Manrico trained as a knight to be badgered into a fight to the death with his brother, who must now atone for the crime that his father perpetrated
on Azucena’s mother? Count di Luna is power-hungry and love-crazed and suspects nothing of all this; he is also not to be envied. How terrible – assuming that it was really so – is this revenge in fact? Will the count really fall to pieces from the knowledge that he had his own brother executed? Here we should not be so sure. To the count, Manrico was first and foremost a rival whom he wanted to eliminate. As ruthless as the count seems to us, it would be surprising if the knowledge that it was his brother had stopped him in any way. Since Cain and Abel, world literature has been full of adversarial brothers, who as rivals for the love of God or the love of a woman treat each other without mercy. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, fratricide is the first of all murders. Perhaps after his initial shock, the count felt something like satisfaction after the execution of Manrico, because even if Manrico was supposed to have been his brother, he was still the other man, the great rival. The opera plays masterfully with the theme of adversarial brothers and so also with the contradiction between – put in modern terms – biological and social relations. Just having the same blood is evidently not enough. But what is the value of family that is bound not by blood ties but only by social and emotional cement? Manrico faces this question. The proof of love on the part of his mother – that she tended his wounds, cared for him devotedly – vouch for a motherhood that he can no longer be sure of. To the extent that he feels like Azucena’s child, he is not the count’s brother. The fact that in a mysterious flood of emotion, in a fit of “strange pity”, he spares the count in a duel may be romantically
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A TRUE STORY
interpreted as the voice of family that prevents him from killing his brother. Count di Luna however was not hampered by any such sentimentality. No inner voice warned him of familial ties with his rival; without batting an eyelid he has him executed. Conversely, the authority of Azucena’s motherhood is not enough to keep Manrico a child and the instrument of her revenge. His love for Leonora is stronger than the assurances from his mother. “Your blood is my blood too.” The fact that he can break away may suggest his comital heritage. It proves nothing, because the fact that sons leave their mothers to follow another woman belongs as much to the basic constellation of poetic family formations as that of brothers who are enemies. Even if it can only be a thought experiment: how would we read this involved story if Azucena’s assurance that Manrico was indeed her natural son was correct? In other words if the captain’s story really was the “true story” that it claims to be, and in order to avenge her mother, the gitana had in fact thrown the count’s child into the flames? On the one hand the story would be deprived of the tragic aspect of a fateful mix-up in the spirit of horror romance. On the other, Azucena’s revenge would take on an additional terrible dimension. Her biological child, Manrico, would then have had the task of killing the second son of the count, just as she had killed his brother. Manrico fails and pays for this with his life. Azucena’s ultimate revenge would then be on the part not of her mother, but of her son. She
avenged him with her final confession. That Manrico was the brother of Count di Luna would then be a lie born of the logic of revenge which would cause the count’s downfall. Azucena’s last words: “You are avenged, o mother” would then refer not to her mother, the old gitana, but to her own motherhood. The children of the old Count di Luna must pay not only for the outrage committed on the old gitana, but also for the murder of Manrico. We do not know what really happened. Everything hangs on the words of Azucena, on whether the burden of memory may not have deceived and misled her. The words she speaks as being true exercise their terrible effect only if these words are also accepted as truth. Luciano Berio was not wrong in giving his musical examination with the trovatore story the title La vera storia. It is the aspiration to truth of a story that, depending on the interpretation, causes Verdi’s Il trovatore to oscillate between fatality and madness. What the truth is is not an academic question in this opera, but one that decides identity and otherness, joy and suffering, life and death. This truth can no longer be found; it can only be remembered and told in a story. The truth is a function of memory and is subject to it. However, no story is free of fiction, facts alone make no sense and no narrative. It is the power of the story that dictates a fate to the characters that they themselves have not chosen. Azucena is however the voice of this story that is as powerless as it is calamitous. Her love and her revenge manifest themselves in nothing less than a – true story.
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Following pages: SCENE
LUCIANA D’INTINO as AZUCENA
IMPRINT GIUSEPPE VERDI
IL TROVATORE SEASON 2024/25 PREMIÈRE OF THE PRODUCTION 5 FEBRUARY 2017 ( R E V I VA L : 2 F E B RUA RY 2 0 2 5 ) Publisher WIENER STAATSOPER GMBH, Opernring 2, 1010 Wien Director DR. BOGDAN ROŠČIĆ Music Director PHILIPPE JORDAN Administrative Director DR. PETRA BOHUSLAV General Editors SERGIO MORABITO, ANDREAS LÁNG AND OLIVER LÁNG Design & concept EXEX Layout & typesetting MIWA MEUSBURGER Printed by PRINT ALLIANCE HAV PRODUKTIONS GMBH, BAD VÖSLAU TEXT & IMAGE REFERENCES This programme is based on the 2017 première programe. IMAGE REFERENCES Cover image: Vladimir Mackevich, Heart, 2015, oak, metal, 65x68cm. Cover image concept: Martin Conrads, Berlin. Performance photos: Michael Pöhn/Wiener Staatsoper GmbH. The English translation is by Andrew Smith. Reproduction only with approval of Wiener Staatsoper GmbH / Dramaturgy. Holders of rights who were unavailable regarding retrospect compensation are requested to make contact.
This production is sponsored by Printed according to the guidelines of the Austrian Ecolabel “Printed Products”, Print Alliance HAV Produktions GmbH, Bad Vöslau, UW-No. 715
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