Macdara has long had the desire to write about the nocturnal tragedy that is Il Trovatore, if only to note two things. Firstly, he wishes to revisit the accepted notion that this opera represents the epitome of silly or confusing operatic Plots. In fact, once one can accept that Azucena threw the wrong baby on her mother’s funeral pyre years before (her own son instead of her enemy’s), the rest follows reasonably straightforwardly: Azucena loves Manrico, the baby she accidentally did not kill, as her son, but is disturbed by her memories, including her mother’s exhortation as she burned to revenge her; the Count seeks out the woman who abducted his brother. In this situation, the two men love the same woman. All this with a civil war underway.

This opera is no more melodramatic than very many others. What seems to account for the standard view on it is something a little bit different; this is the second point your correspondent means to make. That Verdi was a man of the theatre is very well-known. This is not true of all operatic composers; he had his galley years, and came out the other side with a sense not only of what would work in an opera house but what could work: that is, he saw how he himself could shape opera as a popular form, in effect creating his own Audience. With this opera, Macdara is struck by how Verdi appears to have made a formal mistake: the work is all highlights. Verdi either forgot to write in some filler, or, more likely, he was experimenting with giving his audience an evening of climaxes. Unusually, the backstory is described in two introductory arias: a secondary character (one of the few) tells the Luna family’s version of the story; Azucena tells her side on her first appearance in Act II. This helps to propel the story forward, as it moves through four acts, each in two scenes, with the four principal characters appearing in ensembles together almost according to a mathematical formula, albeit with the two female characters not appearing together until the finale (and the two male characters only singing together with Leonora present).

Although the work is not Baroque, being a much later piece, for this writer there is almost something stylistically Baroque about the characters standing and singing from the position that they find themselves in at a given moment. And when, just after Leonora’s death, the wild descending chords signal the end of the opera, one wonders every single time how the following will be dispensed with within the remaining one minute before the curtain falls: the Count (who has been hiding) reveals himself and orders Manrico to be executed, Manrico is taken away and calls out to his mother, Azucena comes to and asks after her son, the Count says he is about to be killed and then makes her witness the execution, Azucena reveals that Manrico was the Count’s own brother, the Count despairs while Azucena cries out to her mother that she has been avenged. All this in one minute.

Was this an experiment, and, if so, did Verdi learn lessons from it that we can only guess at by looking at his later works and wondering how they might otherwise have been different? La Traviata, composed just after Il Trovatore, and premiered only weeks after it, is perfect: one of those operas that seems all made of the same material: the short first act ends with Violetta agreeing with herself that she is happy to be single and free. When Act II begins, she has already been living with Alfredo for months, having left Paris. Act III takes place later; this is an opera no longer than Trovatore, but with much more space, and while none of it is filler (except the gypsy/matador business in Act II), it does not have the distorted feel of Trovatore—it breathes and the audience can draw breath. Much later in Verdi’s career, there is the quiet ending of Aida; the final scene is slow, though not long, an oddly gentle ending after the Judgement Scene, not to mention the first three acts of the opera. Then there is Don Carlos, which seems to this writer to be another experiment in form: in this instance it is not that the opera is all climaxes, but that the pacing speeds up and slows down throughout; your correspondent will gladly stand through the whole thing, and is fascinated by the way the composer returned to it to wrestle different versions out of the four hours of music he composed for it in total. The fact that he did not get Don Carlos quite right—like Trovatore—makes it all the more interesting. We have the composer’s perfect work for when that is what we want, but who can do without the imperfect? With this artist, it is hard to accuse an Experiment of being a work made in Error.

*****

A final thought, following your correspondent’s attendance at a performance of La Fanciulla del West this week: Puccini, Verdi’s heir—inasmuch as he was the next Italian composer whose works are performed in almost every opera house in every season—is perhaps otherwise not much of an heir. Doubtless he learnt musicological lessons from studying Verdi’s work that Macdara is not sufficiently qualified to discover. He had no galley years, with just two early and unsuccessful operas before Manon Lescaut began his string of successes. He was certainly capable of sustained climaxes: at least in the Mitropoulos recording of Fanciulla there are lengthy thrilling passages. And in La Bohème, the second half of Act I has Rodolfo’s Che gelida mannina, then Mimì’s Sì, mi chiamano Mimì, followed by their first duet, O soave fanciulla. But think of the tedious first half of that same act, with the roguish bohemians. Fanciulla also begins with a load of roguish men, though the weirdness of an Italian opera set in California gets one through it. Perhaps Tosca comes close to the relentless drive of Trovatore. Puccini may have understood the need for pacing, but the low points aren’t always fun. This writer has just now had a chill memory of Ping, Pang and Pong in Turandot. Macdara has sometimes had the impression that others in the Audience are enjoying the downtime Puccini has provided more than he himself is. Perhaps the problem is with your humourless correspondent.