Il Trovatore

Few operas have been as maligned as Il Trovatore. But few things in opera can compare to (and diminish an audience’s delight in) the dramatic power of the endless melodies and surging rhythms Verdi lavished on his characters. At the center of a tangled web of fate is Marcello Álvarez as the heroic troubadour, Manrico, who finds himself in a deadly conflict with Count di Luna (a suave Dmitri Hvorostovsky) over the woman they both love (Sondra Radvanovsky as Leonora). It’s all the fault of the demented gypsy Azucena (a brilliant Dolora Zajick), who is Manrico’s mother. Or is she?