Il Trovatore (Royal Opera)

[Scheherezade]

A totally convincing, all-round performance from Semenchuk, who effortlessly stole the show on the opening night. The rest of the cast were more park and bark but delivered the goods vocally, with a wonderful warmth and colour to Meli's Manrico, suitable menace from Lucic and great support from Haroutounian and Muraro.

 

Once again, a less than inspiring production, with too many simplistic and overly-signposted projections and a bizarre carnival air to the gypsy camp that was totally at odds with the war-zone brutality of almost everything else but at least the interpretation made some sort of sense, which is more than can be said for many of the latest RO offerings. How nice it would be to have a production that acknowledged the intelligence of its audience!

 

Nevertheless, an enjoyable and rewarding evening.

[Jan McNulty]

Which company was this Scheherezade?

[Scheherezade]

Sorry Janet, I didn't realise how ambiguous my post was until I read it through. It's the first of two casts currently performing at the ROH. With a little overlap (Haroutounian and Kunde are singing again), there are two further casts later in the year with Hvorostovsky and Kelsey as di Luna in place of Lucic and Maltman,  Alagna and Kunde sharing Manrico, Haroutounian and Agresta  as Leonora and Rachvelishvili as Azucena throughout the second run.

[Geoff]

Having heard Kunde on a radio recording last year (or the year before) I was really looking forward to his debut. Thrilling top notes, unforced, pretty amazing particularly for a singer his age - but some odd things seemed to be going on lower down.

 

Not what I heard on the radio. Was it me? Or him? We had no announcement of illness and indeed his behaviour at the curtain call suggested he was expecting an ovation, which he did not quite get. I am wondering about going back to check (I see he is down to sing a lot more performances later in the season so it can't just be me with high expectations). I'd be glad of a second opinion.