Christopher Webber writes of "Il Trovatore":

>As spoken drama it would be ludicrous - unless staged in the absurdist
>style of Ionesco.  But then, to apply the criteria of spoken drama to "Il
>Trovatore" is equally absurd.  Viewed as a structure and text for musical
>drama, it is dramatically coherent in every important way.
>
>Taut, lean, offering superbly balanced opportunities for the 4 principals,
>shorn of nearly all narrative ballast, densely packed with strong situation
>and emotional thrust, "Il Trovatore" gives Verdi precisely what he wanted,
>an archetype of the old-fashioned opera conventions, which produced a
>massively direct emotional power in his dramatic music.

Amen from an "Il Trovatore" lover!  But I have to disagree with, or at
least touch on one point:  the "shorn of nearly all narrative ballast."
Of all the great operas I know, "Il Trovatore" spends the most time on
narrative.  In fact, the most brilliant thing about it is the way in which
Verdi makes the narrative arias do the duty of the standard "this is what
I am feeling and/or this is what I'm going to do" aria.  So I guess the
narrative isn't "ballast"--it's the air that raises the balloon.  (Not
one of my better metaphors...)

Peter Goldstein