Charles Duprat / OnP

Opera

Il Trovatore

Giuseppe Verdi

Opéra Bastille

from 21 January to 17 February 2023

2h50 with 1 interval

Il Trovatore

Opéra Bastille - from 21 January to 17 February 2023

Synopsis

In the wake of Rigoletto, Verdi’s one aspiration was to do something new. Yet despite his eagerness, the project of adapting the Spanish playwright Antonio Garcia Gutiérrez’s El Trovado, a play with a rocambolesque plot set in medieval Spain and featuring troubadours along with a gypsy’s curse, inspired his librettist, Salvatore Cammarano, with only mild enthusiasm. However, Verdi succeeded in transcending this story of love and death through the vertiginous beauty of his music: since its first performance in 1853, this particularly inspired work has become one of the mainstays of the repertoire. Thanks to the clarity of his staging, set amid the noise and fury of a fratricidal war, Àlex Ollé makes night, castles, soldiers, pyres and eternal hatred instantly believable.

Duration : 2h50 with 1 interval

Language : Italian

Surtitle : French / English

  • Opening

  • First part 70 min

  • Intermission 30 min

  • Second part 70 min

  • End

Show acts and characters

CHARACTERS

Ferrando: Captain of the Count di Luna’s guard
Leonora: Lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Aragon
Ines: Leonora’s confidante
The Count di Luna: A young nobleman of Aragon
Manrico: A troubadour, he is Count di Luna’s political rival and rival in love
Azucena: A gypsy, believed to be Manrico’s mother
Ruiz: A partisan of Manrico
ACT I - THE DUEL
Ferrando tells his soldiers the story of a gypsy who was burned at the stake for having bewitched the younger of the two sons of the old Count di Luna. Soon thereafter, the gypsy’s daughter abducted the child out of vengeance and its charred remains were discovered on the very spot where her mother had been tortured to death. Ferrando has not yet found the gypsy’s daughter but he is certain that he will be able to recognise her in spite of all the years that have passed. It is evening and Leonora awaits her lover, the troubadour Manrico. She tells Ines, her confidante, how she met him. Ines advises Leonora to forget Manrico. The present Count di Luna, who is also enamoured of Leonora, approaches, having finally decided to declare his love for her. Just then, the melodious voice of Manrico is heard. Fooled by the darkness, Leonora rushes towards the Count, but she soon realises her mistake when Manrico appears. Furious, the Count regards the singer not just as a rival, but also as a political adversary. Their dispute will be settled by a duel.

ACT II - THE GYPSY WOMAN
In their camp, the gypsies prepare for their day. The sight of the flames reminds Azucena of her mother burning at the stake. Even though Manrico emerged victorious from the duel with the Count di Luna, he left the latter alive in order to confront him in armed combat later. Left for dead on the battlefield, he was nursed back to health by his mother Azucena. The gypsy recounts how her mother was consumed by the flames and how, out of vengeance, and in a moment of mental confusion, she threw her own son into the flames and not the Count’s child. Manrico asks her: if he is not her son, then who is he in reality? Azucena composes herself and manages to reassure him. A messenger arrives with news that Leonora, believing Manrico to be dead, is about to enter a convent. Manrico races to her side to prevent her from doing so. The Count di Luna, who has also learned of Leonora’s intentions, decides to abduct her but Manrico gets there first and the two lovers escape together.

ACT III - THE GYPSY WOMAN’S SON
The Count di Luna’s soldiers prepare to attack Manrico and Leonora’s hiding place. The Count fears that he has lost Leonora to his rival forever. Azucena, who has come in search of Manrico, is arrested near the lovers’ refuge and is accused of spying. Ferrando recognises her as the woman who abducted the brother of the young Count several years earlier. When she calls on Manrico, her presumed son, for help, Luna also realises that she is the mother of his enemy and he sentences her to death. Manrico and Leonora prepare to marry in secret. Ruiz, Manrico’s friend, arrives and informs them that Azucena has been imprisoned. Manrico calls on his friends to help him free the gypsy woman whom he believes to be his mother.

ACT IV - THE PUNISHMENT
Manrico’s attempts to free his mother have failed. He and Azucena are now imprisoned at the mercy of the Count di Luna and are to be executed at dawn. Leonora, who nevertheless managed to escape, persuades Ruiz to take her to the prison where Manrico and his mother are to be executed the following morning at dawn. She begs the Count di Luna to spare Manrico and is even ready to give herself to him in exchange. The Count accepts the offer. However, in order to avoid keeping her promise, she secretly swallowsa poison. Leonora reaches the prison. She tries to convince Manrico to flee without her. Believing he has been betrayed, Manrico curses his beloved. However, when the poison starts to take effect, he realises that she has sacrificed herself out of love for him. The Count di Luna, who has been listening to everything, realises that Leonora has deceived him. He orders the immediate execution of Manrico and forces Azucena to witness the death of her presumed son, after which the gypsy reveals the terrible truth to the Count: Manrico was his brother.

Artists

Opera in four parts (1853)

After Antonio García Gutiérrez

Creative team

Cast

Orchestre et Choeurs de l’Opéra national de Paris
Coproduction avec De Nationale Opera, Amsterdam et le Teatro dell’Opera, Roma

Media

  • Il Trovatore "à c(h)œur ouvert"

    Il Trovatore "à c(h)œur ouvert"

    Watch the video

  • Podcast Le Trouvère

    Podcast Le Trouvère

    Listen the podcast

  • Draw-me Il Trovatore

    Draw-me Il Trovatore

    Watch the video

  • Opera word for word – Il Trovatore

    Opera word for word – Il Trovatore

    Listen the podcast

  • A troubadour at war

    A troubadour at war

    Read the article

© Julien Benhamou / OnP

Il Trovatore "à c(h)œur ouvert"

Watch the video

Encounter with the Paris Opera Chorus

01 min

Il Trovatore "à c(h)œur ouvert"

By Clara Guedj, Thida Thongsoume

For the Opéra Bastille's revival of the Alex Ollé / La Fura dels Baus production of Il Trovatore, Alessandro Di Stefano, Deputy Chorus Master, Olivier Ayault and Liliana Faraon, Chorus members, discuss the score and the various stages of work that constitute the depth and breadth of their profession, between musical interpretation and theatrical expression.

© Charles Duprat / OnP

Podcast Le Trouvère

Listen the podcast

"Dance! Sing! 7 minutes at the Paris Opera"

08 min

Podcast Le Trouvère

By France Musique

"Dance! Sing! 7 minutes at the Paris Opera" offers original incursions into the season thanks to broadcasts produced by France Musique and the Paris Opera. For each opera or ballet production, Charlotte Landru-Chandès (opera) and Jean-Baptiste Urbain (dance), present the works and artists you are going to discover when you attend performances in our theatres. 

Draw-me Il Trovatore

Watch the video

Understand the plot in 1 minute

1:28 min

Draw-me Il Trovatore

By Octave

The most popular opera of its time and acclaimed since its creation, Il Trovatore single-handedly illustrates the magic of opera. Returning to the stage of the Opéra Bastille in a production by Àlex Ollé, one of the six artistic directors of the Catalan collective La Fura dels Baus, this opera with its numerous twists and turns has all the ingredients of a cloak-and-dagger novel, including castles, soldiers, burnings at the stake, and outlaws...
Àlex Ollé has chosen to set Il Trovatore in the context of the First World War, thus justifying the extreme situations which the characters have to face: love, jealousy, hate and the desire for vengeance… Based around Antonio García Gutiérrez’s Spanish classic El Trovador ( 1836), the intense, complex libretto is transcended by the beauty of the singing and the director’s turbulent yet visionary vitality.  

Opera word for word – Il Trovatore

Listen the podcast

Literary podcast evoking an opera and a stage director’s vision

1:28 min

Opera word for word – Il Trovatore

By Benoit Maubrey, Marion Mirande

Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore in Alex Ollé's production, in the words of Na Castelloza, Charles Baudelaire, Gaston Bachelard, Jean Echenoz.

Copyright :

  • Na Castelloza, Chanson du XIIIe siècle
  • Charles Baudelaire, Bohémiens en voyage, extrait de Les Fleurs du mal, 1857
  • Gaston Bachelard, La Psychanalyse du feu, Éditions Gallimard, 1938
  • Jean Echenoz, 14, Éditions de Minuit, 2012

© Eléna Bauer / OnP

A troubadour at war

Read the article

Àlex Ollé. Portrait

10 min

A troubadour at war

By Isabelle Moindrot

Àlex Ollé, a stage director regularly acclaimed by the international press, is not unknown to Parisian opera-goers, and his productions of The Magic Flute, Bluebeard’s Castle and The Diary of One Who Disappeared, presented by the Catalan collective La Fura dels Baus in 2005 and 2007, have delighted Paris Opera audiences. Since then, many things have happened. La Fura has continued to explore the future (or, alas, anticipate current realities) with interactive, hi-tech projects like the “smartshow” M.U.R.S. performed at La Villette in June 2015, in which the audience was invited to take part in an experiment involving an imaginary chemical weapons attack. It also continues to offer somewhat more classical interpretations of the grand opera repertoire including Il Trovatore, performed this season at Opera Bastille. Captivating audiences with its tormented, visionary ardour, this production remains true both to Verdi’s spirit of melodrama and the collective’s commitment to the present, which, since its foundation in 1979, is one of the hallmarks of La Fura dels Baus.

La Fura dels Baus brings together musicians, dancers, mime artists, actors, film-makers, directors, painters and sculptors and, in the tradition of Antonin Artaud’s “Theatre of Cruelty”, seeks to kindle in audiences the searing flame of strong emotions and to stamp the theatrical moment with the seal of unique experience. It was initially associated with street theatre, making original use of urban spaces and bringing together performers and spectators to project an active political discourse into the public arena, before becoming more widely known for the mastery and artistic daring of its staged productions. Within a few years, the singular language of La Fura was to be heard in different places throughout the world. To cite only one example, it provided the central feature in the opening ceremony of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, since when it has been regularly invited to appear at major cultural events in every continent. 

Il Trovatore, 2016
Il Trovatore, 2016 © Charles Duprat / OnP

The revolutionary take of the group has not disappeared but it has changed. The pursuit of an immediate physical impact has given way to an emotional and intellectual quest, whose impetus is constantly recharged through technological innovation. The work of the collective branched out at one point towards the fantasy film genre, and their first film, Fausto 5.0, swept the board for prizes when it was released at the beginning of the century. This theatre of emotion has thus embraced new media, reinventing itself through a constant search for new audiences. These have indeed become more diverse and widespread, a fitting parallel with La Fura’s ship, Le Naumon, which has sailed from Europe to China laden with images, sounds and artists, pushing back the limits of space, time and reason.

On the voyage that brought the Catalan collective to the world of opera, despite its being set seemingly on other courses, one man played a decisive role: Gérard Mortier went to Barcelona, discovered La Fura and invited them to Salzburg. Coolly signing up not one or even several artists, but an entire collective, and one with a strange name into the bargain (Baus is the birthplace of one of the founder members and Fura means ferret in Catalan), ushered in a new era. Wouldn’t La Fura have been something of an intrusion? Mightn't they launch an attack against opera? Not a bit of it! Mortier entrusted the collective with the direction of the 1999 production of The Damnation of Faust and it turned out to be a stroke of genius! The myth of the ageing scholar whose life dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge has left him bitter and frustrated and who, as death beckons, makes a pact with Hell, is one that has always haunted the founders of La Fura, and which recurs again and again in their work, - in 2014 for example, with a Faust (by Gounod) in which the hero appears as a contemporary biologist working on a dangerous “Humunculus Project”.

As the age of the Promethean director – a figure of admiration for amateurs and a target for critics – draws imperceptibly to a close, a broader aesthetic is emerging, interweaving creative functions and giving form to overtly hybrid artistic identities. La Fura has excited admiration for its capacity to transpose meaning collectively in a quasi-organic manner. Nothing distinguishes it better from what is generally done in the world of opera than the ways in which it uses not only dancers and acrobats but also stage machinery, lighting and video footage to create powerful effects, giving the vocal artists their due importance and enabling them to transcend themselves.

Tristan et Isolde , 2011
Tristan et Isolde , 2011 © Stofleth

For many years, Àlex Ollé and Carlus Padrissa directed operatic productions together under the label La Fura dels Baus, until the number of contracts and the ramifications of their lives led them along separate paths. This can be seen merely as the result of the opera system or interpreted in the light of evolutions in stage direction. If a sense of wonder, a physical sense of immensity, of being carried away by the visual magic, remains the hallmark of their work, La Fura seeks nevertheless to break the chains of this fascination. In Àlex Ollé’s work, spectacular profusion converges into something sharper, with a single perspective, a marked re-focussing contributing to a re-appropriation of drama through an approach to direction observable over the last few years. Thus, in Un ballo in masquera, Ollé’s first Verdi opera, a prize-winning production premiered in Sydney in 2013, then revived in Cologne and Buenos Aires, the director sought to recreate the political fire of Verdi himself and drew inspiration from Orwell’s novel 1984, transposing the action to the near future in the aftermath of an economic crisis that has radically altered human relationships. In the same way also, in The Flying Dutchman, first performed in Lyon in 2014, Franc Aleu’s video footage created hallucinatory illusionist effects and reinforced the theatrical choices of the director. The action was in fact transposed to one of the most polluted places on the planet, the port of Chittagong in Bangladesh where workers are forced to dismantle cargos in appallingly dangerous conditions, in this case, the cursed cargo of the Flying Dutchman.

However, the political and critical dimension is in no sense a “discourse” imposed from outside but the result of a shared, incandescent vision. By unravelling certain symbolic strands, often highly sensual in nature, and soliciting spaces combining the realistic and formal potentialities of both the staging and video projection, Ollé creates connections between far-flung reaches of the imagination and leads us into the present. Thus, in Le Grand macabre, a prize-winning production dated 2009, the use of laughter, both salutary and grotesque, evoked the outlandish universe of Hieronymous Bosch as an image of the perversions of a contemporary society obsessed with the spectacular. To give another example, in the 2011 Lyon Opera production of Tristan and Isolde, a hemispherical stage represented first the moon, then King Mark’s castle, the lovers’ emotional prison and finally the deadly labyrinth of nihilistic aspirations.

In his 2015 production of Pelléas et Mélisande for Dresden Semperoper, the silhouettes of Pelléas, Golaud and Arkel, with their long white hair, embodied the strange and archaic resemblance between the male characters, highlighting the immutable singularity of Mélisande and, by a kind of ricochet, the mystery of the recurrent violence inflicted on what is most delicate and unique in each one of us.   

Le Grand Macabre, 2009
Le Grand Macabre, 2009 © Bernd Uhlig

What of humanity, of its mutations, of the parameters of its social structures, of its links with nature and with life? This is the question posed by La Fura to today’s audiences. What is remarkable about Alex Ollé, an artist who respects the text to the letter when directing his actors, is that he manages to give substance to the burning preoccupations of operatic fiction whilst bringing out in his singers all the fire of their physical presence. For anyone who loves singing, to watch a performance of Il Trovatore staged in that spirit is a total experience. Far from deflecting attention by complicated dramaturgy, the direction is tight, reducing the intrigue to first principles. The story is transposed to a period close to our own time (roughly 1914-1918), a period of war between brothers, frenzied, wearying, in which human life has no longer any value and only primal passions – hatred, jealousy, vengeance, anxiety and love prevail.

The director has opted for an abstract scenography (the work of Alfons Flores) using vertically compressible pillars. Illuminated by Urs Schönbaum’s magnificent expressionist lighting design, creating sculpturesque shadows and highlighting the symbolic use of colour, the set metamorphoses with every scene, defining spaces that vibrate like a living character. Non-human and yet utterly reactive to the unfolding drama, the space turns from ochre to grey, at times lit from below with a sickly green, blazing at others like a funeral pyre or edged with a ribbon of blood, the shadows thickening to obscurity whilst mirrors at the sides and back of the stage constantly reflect the scene in zones of dream-like intensity.

In the chaotic universe of Il Trovatore, the possibility of otherness is so utterly denied that parents condemn their own children to the flames and brother slaughters brother. Ollé shows us a world consumed by fire, a world of armed combat, through which the gypsies must pass with their suitcases and bundles in a new exodus reminiscent of so many others. Towers rise up or disappear beneath the stage, marking out streets, walls or rows of tombs, hollowing out the lines of ditches where anonymous bodies are tossed without the least ceremony. The faces of the chorus and extras – soldiers, nuns, - disappear beneath helmets and veils or behind gas masks. Castle, camp, cloister, prison, - all are now in ruins and exude the scent of death. If crosses have been placed here and there in the burial ground, God seems to have deserted the field. However, when the troubadour appears, all is still, frozen or suspended, as if the only possible salvation on this earth resides in the fire of artistic creation. More than ever, perhaps, it is necessary to reiterate this and remember it.

  • [EXTRAIT] IL TROVATORE by Giuseppe Verdi (Yusif Eyvazov - "Di quella pira")
  • TOÏ TOÏ TOÏ I 5 questions sur LE TROUVÈRE avec ANNA PIROZZI
  • [EXTRAIT] IL TROVATORE by Giuseppe Verdi (Étienne Dupuis - "Il balen del suo sorriso")
  • [EXTRAIT] IL TROVATORE by Giuseppe Verdi (Anna Pirozzi, Yusif Eyvazov, Étienne Dupuis)
  • Le Trouvère (saison 22/23) - Acte IV (Yusif Eyvazov, Anna Pirozzi, Judit Kutasi, Etienne Dupuis)

  • Le Trouvère (saison 22/23) - Acte III (Yusif Eyvazov, Anna Pirozzi)

  • Le Trouvère (saison 22/23)- Acte III (Roberto Tagliavini)

  • Le Trouvère (saison 22/23)- Acte II (Etienne Dupuis)

  • Le Trouvère (saison 22/23) - Acte II

  • Le Trouvère (saison 22/23)- Acte I - (Anna Pirozzi , Marie - Andrée Bouchard - Lesieur)

  • Le Trouvère (saison 22/23) - Acte II (Judit Kutasi)

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Access and services

Opéra Bastille

Place de la Bastille

75012 Paris

Public transport

Underground Bastille (lignes 1, 5 et 8), Gare de Lyon (RER)

Bus 29, 69, 76, 86, 87, 91, N01, N02, N11, N16

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Car park

Q-Park Opéra Bastille 34, rue de Lyon 75012 Paris

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  • Cloakrooms

    Free cloakrooms are at your disposal. The comprehensive list of prohibited items is available here.

  • Bars

    Reservation of drinks and light refreshments for the intervals is possible online up to 24 hours prior to your visit, or at the bars before each performance.

  • Boutiques

    A selection of works items are available on our various boutiques: Online store and The Opéra Bastille Shop.

    LEARN MORE.

  • Last-minute tickets

    Special reduced rates for people under the age of 28, unemployed and seniors over 65 are available. 

    LEARN MORE.

  • Parking

    You can park your car at the Q-Park Opéra Bastille. It is located at 34 rue de Lyon, 75012 Paris. 

    BOOK YOUR PARKING PLACE.

In both our venues, discounted tickets are sold at the box offices from 30 minutes before the show:

  • €35 tickets for under-28s, unemployed people (with documentary proof less than 3 months old) and senior citizens over 65 with non-taxable income (proof of tax exemption for the current year required)
  • €70 tickets for senior citizens over 65

Get samples of the operas and ballets at the Paris Opera gift shops: programmes, books, recordings, and also stationery, jewellery, shirts, homeware and honey from Paris Opera.

Opéra Bastille
  • Open 1h before performances and until performances end
  • Get in from within the theatre’s public areas
  • For more information: +33 1 40 01 17 82

Opéra Bastille

Place de la Bastille

75012 Paris

Public transport

Underground Bastille (lignes 1, 5 et 8), Gare de Lyon (RER)

Bus 29, 69, 76, 86, 87, 91, N01, N02, N11, N16

Calculate my route
Car park

Q-Park Opéra Bastille 34, rue de Lyon 75012 Paris

Book your parking spot
  • Cloakrooms

    Free cloakrooms are at your disposal. The comprehensive list of prohibited items is available here.

  • Bars

    Reservation of drinks and light refreshments for the intervals is possible online up to 24 hours prior to your visit, or at the bars before each performance.

  • Boutiques

    A selection of works items are available on our various boutiques: Online store and The Opéra Bastille Shop.

    LEARN MORE.

  • Last-minute tickets

    Special reduced rates for people under the age of 28, unemployed and seniors over 65 are available. 

    LEARN MORE.

  • Parking

    You can park your car at the Q-Park Opéra Bastille. It is located at 34 rue de Lyon, 75012 Paris. 

    BOOK YOUR PARKING PLACE.

In both our venues, discounted tickets are sold at the box offices from 30 minutes before the show:

  • €35 tickets for under-28s, unemployed people (with documentary proof less than 3 months old) and senior citizens over 65 with non-taxable income (proof of tax exemption for the current year required)
  • €70 tickets for senior citizens over 65

Get samples of the operas and ballets at the Paris Opera gift shops: programmes, books, recordings, and also stationery, jewellery, shirts, homeware and honey from Paris Opera.

Opéra Bastille
  • Open 1h before performances and until performances end
  • Get in from within the theatre’s public areas
  • For more information: +33 1 40 01 17 82

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