Il Trovatore (The Troubadour) is a grand opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to a libretto by Salvatore Cammarano. Based on the play El Trovador (1836) by Antonio García Gutiérrez.

Il Trovatore first premiered at Teatro Apollo, Rome, on 19 January 1853.

The Opera is set in Biscay and Aragon, 15th century Spain.

The season opens with Giuseppe Verdi’s Spanish masterpiece, Il Trovatore, or The Troubadour. Based on the Spanish drama, El Trovador by Antonio Garcia Gutierrez, this opera is the second of Verdi’s great trio – Rigoletto, Il Trovatore and La Traviata. Completed between 1851 and 1853, these works are the core of Verdi’s middle period and have been universally accepted as being masterpieces, and as being his most popular works.

In each of these operas, Verdi expanded the formalism that we hear in works like The Barber of Seville to a musical language that is more fluid and which joins the music with the drama. In a sense, Verdi and his German rival Richard Wagner were moving on different roads toward the same goal – music drama. Verdi and his librettist for Il Trovatore, Salvatore Cammarano condensed Gutierrez’s sprawling historic melodrama into a concise libretto set against the backdrop of a fifteenth-century Spanish civil war. Unfortunately, Cammarano died before completing work on Il Trovatore, and the libretto had to be finished by Leone Emanuele Bardare.

Unlike the third opera of Verdi’s trilogy, La Traviata whose opening night, just three months after Il Trovatore, was a fiasco; Il Trovatore’s first performances in January 1853 at the Teatro Apollo in Rome were an unqualified triumph. Il Trovatore received 229 performances throughout Europe in the next three years -- 190 in six different theaters in Naples alone. The Paris debut followed in 1855, for which Verdi translated the libretto into French, with the title Le Trouvere, and added ballet in Act III, which was expected in Paris at the time.

Act I
“The Duel.” As the curtain rises, we find Ferrando and a number of soldiers keeping watch. It is late, and in order to pass the time, Ferrando recounts a dark story of long ago. He tells the men that when the Count di Luna was young, a gypsy woman cast a spell on his baby brother. The baby then became ill and the gypsy was burned at the stake for practicing witchcraft. But the gypsy’s daughter exacted a terrible revenge. Ferrando explains that she kidnapped the Count’s younger brother, and later, on the very spot where her mother had been put to death, the half-burned skeleton of a child was found. The Count’s father could never admit that his son was dead and he charged his eldest son to continue to search for his brother. Ever since that day, the Count has looked for the gypsy’s daughter who stole his brother.

Scene II
Leonora, a lady in waiting to the Princess of Aragon, tells her confidant, Ines, of her longing to see the troubadour with whom she has fallen in love. She explains that she met him at a tournament during which she presented the winning prize to him. Civil war broke out, she recalls, and she did not see him again until one night, from her balcony, she heard her name being sung by a troubadour. Rushing to her balcony, she found that the singer was her unknown warrior from the tournament. The two ladies leave the garden and the Count enters. He is in love with Leonora and often spends the entire night under her balcony. At the sound of a troubadour singing in the distance, Leonora reenters the garden. It is dark and Leonora mistakes the Count for his brother, Manrico, who is in fact her troubadour lover. Manrico is a follower of the rebel Prince Urgel, a pretender to the throne of Spain who has been sentenced to death -- his brother, the Count, is a royalist. The troubadour enters and dares the Count to try to capture him and the scene ends as the two men begin their duel.

Act Two
“The Gypsy.” A tribe of gypsies has made their camp on the mountainside of Vizcaya. Azucena sits by the fire. Manrico lies near her, wounded from his recent duel with the Count di Luna, and lost in thought as he sadly holds his sword. Azucena sings a song of a gypsy woman who was burned at the stake. She turns to Manrico and murmurs, “Avenge me.” Manrico questions Azucena, whom he has always believed to be his mother, about the events in the song she just finished. She tells him that his grandmother was accused of witchcraft by the Count di Luna’s father, and that she, while holding her baby son in her arms, watched her mother being burned at the stake. Her mother implored her with the words “Avenge me,” and to do so, Azucena kidnapped the Count’s son and in a fit of rage, terror and madness threw the baby into the same fire that had consumed her mother. But when she came to her senses, and looked about her, there was the Count’s son by her side – she had indeed thrown her own son into the flames. Manrico is horrified. “Who then am I?” he asks her. Azucena realizes her mistake and reassures him – “Have I not always been a loving mother to you?” she says. Manrico admits this and Azucena’s deception is once again covered. For what we have just learned is that after she realized her terrible mistake in having killed her own son, she decided to raise the Count’s infant brother as her own, so that one day he could avenge the death of her mother. Ruiz enters the gypsy camp with instructions for Manrico to take command of the rebel forces at the fortress of Castellor. He adds that Leonora, believing Manrico was killed in his duel with the Count, is about to enter a convent. Manrico rushes off to stop his beloved from taking this desperate step as the scene comes to a close.

Scene 2
A courtyard at the convent. The Count and his men enter. He sings of his love for Leonora and pledges to steal her away and marry her. The nuns enter, followed by Leonora, who is about to take her vows. The Count stops them declaring “The only altar you will embrace is the wedding altar.” Suddenly, Manrico and his men appear – the rival factions fight – and Manrico drags Leonora off with him as Act II comes to a close.

Act III
“The Gypsy’s Son.” Count di Luna’s men are preparing for an attack against the rebel forces at Castellor. The guards drag in a gypsy who has been prowling about the camp. When Ferrando recognizes her as being the daughter of the gypsy that was burned for witchcraft, the Count realizes that he has Manrico’s mother in his clutches.

Scene 2
At the same time, in the rebel stronghold of Castellor, Manrico and Leonora are about to be married. But Ruiz rushes in to announce that Azucena has been captured and that she is about to be burned at the stake. In the most stirring of all cabalettas in opera, Manrico summons his solders to save his mother.

Act IV
“The Punishment.” The Count’s army has recaptured Castellor; Manrico has failed to rescue his mother and has been taken prisoner. Ruiz leads Leonora in, pointing to the tower where Manrico is being held. A chorus of monks can be heard singing the Miserere hymn for the traitors who are to be executed at dawn. Leonora promises Count di Luna that she will be his if she releases Manrico -- he agrees. Her real intention is to release Manrico, and then kill herself, and so, she takes a slow-acting poison as she walks toward Manrico’s cell. In the prison cell where Manrico and Azucena await their execution, Leonora enters and tells him he is free to go. Manrico discovers her bargain with the Count and denounces her, but when she falls, dying from the poison, he realizes her sacrifice. The Count enters and sends Manrico to be executed. Azucena begs him to stop the execution, but it is too late! As she watches Manrico die, she declares to the Count “He was your brother! -- You are avenged, mother.”

The Cast (in order of vocal appearance)
Ferrando (bass) – Captain of the guards to the Count di Luna

Inez (mezzo-soprano) – Servant to Leonora

Leonora (soprano) – Lady in Waiting to the Princess of Aragon

Count di Luna (baritone) – Nobleman in the service of the Prince of Aragon

Manrico (tenor) – Unknown brother to the Count, adopted son of Azucena, Officer in the army of the rebel Prince of Urgel

Azucena (mezzo-soprano) – Gypsy

Ruiz (tenor) – Lieutenant to Manrico

Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901)

The great Italian composer Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was born in La Roncole on October 10, 1813. When he was still a child, Verdi's parents moved from Piacenza to Busseto, where the future composer's education was greatly facilitated by visits to the large library belonging to the local Jesuit school. Also in Busseto, Verdi was given his first lessons in composition.

Displaying considerable talent from a very early age, he was assistant organist at the small local church by the time he was ten. In 1829, at the age of 13, he was an assistant conductor of the Busseto orchestra and an organist at the town church. In 1836, Verdi married Margherita Barezzi, the daughter of his benefactor, Antonio Barezzi.

Verdi went to Milan when he was twenty to continue his studies. He took private lessons in counterpoint while attending operatic performances, as well as concerts of, specifically, German music. Milan's beaumonde association convinced him that he should pursue a career as a theatre composer. During the mid 1830s, he attended the Salotto Maffei salons in Milan, hosted by Clara Maffei.

His first successful opera, Oberto, opened at La Scala in 1839. However, his next opera, the comedy Un Giorno di Regno (King for a Day), was a complete failure. To add tragedy to insult, Verdi lost his wife and two young children to illness within the same year, and the despondent composer resolved to give up music altogether. Fortunately, the manager of La Scala persuaded him to persevere and write his next opera – Nabucco, which premiered in 1842 to great acclaim and securing Verdi's reputation as a major figure in the music world.

Between 1844 and 1850 Verdi composed at a tremendous rate, demonstrating a maturing style and more flowing musical line, as evidenced in Ernani (1844), Macbeth (1847), and Luisa Miller (1849). During his "middle period" Verdi wrote three of his most successful operas: Rigoletto (1851), Il Trovatore (1853), and La Traviata (1853). These were followed by I vespri siciliani (The Sicilian Vespers, 1855), Simon Boccanegra (1857), Un ballo in maschera (A Masked Ball, 1859), La Forza del Destino (The Force of Destiny, 1862) and Don Carlos (1867). After Aïda (1871), which commemorated the opening of the Suez Canal in Egypt, Verdi retired to his estate at Sant'Agata, where he wrote the great Requiem Mass.

In each of these operas, Verdi expanded the formalism that we hear in works like The Barber of Seville to a musical language that is more fluid and which joins the music with the drama. In a sense, Verdi and his German rival Richard Wagner were moving on different roads toward the same goal – music drama. Verdi and his librettist for Il Trovatore, Salvatore Cammarano condensed Gutierrez’s sprawling historic melodrama into a concise libretto set against the backdrop of a fifteenth-century Spanish civil war. Unfortunately, Cammarano died before completing work on Il Trovatore, and the libretto had to be finished by Leone Emanuele Bardare.

Unlike the third opera of Verdi’s trilogy, La Traviata whose opening night, just three months after Il Trovatore, was a fiasco; Il Trovatore’s first performances in January 1853 at the Teatro Apollo in Rome were an unqualified triumph. Il Trovatore received 229 performances throughout Europe in the next three years -- 190 in six different theaters in Naples alone. The Paris debut followed in 1855, for which Verdi translated the libretto into French, with the title Le Trouvere, and added ballet in Act III, which was expected in Paris at the time.

Verdi was drawn back to the opera by his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, who introduced him to the celebrated poet and composer Arrigo Boito. They worked together on what would be Verdi's final triumphs, both based on works by Shakespeare: Otello (1886), Falstaff (1893), the only other comedy he had written since the disastrous Un Giorno di Regno and considered Verdi's humanistic masterpiece.

Upon his death in 1901, there were scenes of national mourning for the man who was a great musician, philanthropist and patriot to all of Italy. At the funeral, the 28,000 people who lined the streets of Milan broke out softly but spontaneously into "Va pensiero," the great chorus of the Hebrew slaves from Nabucco – a song which had become Italy's unofficial national anthem. Verdi was buried with his second wife Giuseppina Strepponi at the Casa di Riposo, a retirement home for elderly musicians that was established by Verdi himself.