Verdi's Il Trovatore to be on stage in Korea

Verdi's Il Trovatore to be on stage in Korea. November. 22, 2016 07:12. by Dong-Wook Kim creating@donga.com. Il Trovatore, an opera that depicts a desperate revenge by a socially vulnerable person against vested rights, will be performed at Seoul Arts Center from Friday to Sunday. Il Trovatore is one of Giuseppe Verdi's three masterpieces along with La Traviata and Rigoletto. Arousing poetic inspiration and the lure of vocal music, Il Trovatore shows Verdi's talented music sense as well as an appreciative eye for art of stage.

Il Trovatore means a wandering minstrel, and is a story that has a background of a Spanish play with the same title on the life of medieval knights. The story is set in 15th-century Spain, where a female gypsy oppressed by a lord attempts a desperate revenge, and is also a story of the love and tragedy of a beautiful maid of the lord and a wandering minstrel. It was first performed at the Apollo Theater in Rome on Jan. 19, 1853.

The four main singers need strong power and technique, which means it is difficult to arrange performers who can sufficiently digest their roles. This is why in Korea there have been fewer stages than Verdi's other popular works. Famous arias and choruses such as Anvil Chorus, Di Quella Pira, D'amor sull'ali rosee were independently on stage a numerous times.

The upcoming Il Trovatore performance was jointly produced by La Fenice Theatre in Venice, Teatro Regio di Parma and Sol Opera.

Set up in 1937, La Fenice Theatre is deeply linked to Verdi, who is said to have composed La Traviata to perform it there. Teatro Regio di Parma was set up in 1829 and led the revival of Italian opera and has been holding Verdi festival every year for a month.

For this year's performance, the stages, clothing, singers, producers and technicians all came from Italy. Fiorenza Cedolins, a soprano singer acting in La Scala, Rome Opera Theater, as well as baritone Elia Fabbian will be on stage. Lorenzo Mariani, who produced Andrea Bocelli's debut opera work is in charge of production, while Gianluca Martinenghi will be the conductor. "We have made a more outstanding combination by integrating the good points of the two theaters' performances," said Lee So-young, director of Sol Opera.