English lighting designer Bruno Poet has a field day with onstage special FX, conjuring up moving pillars of light, a tower that looks like a descending elevator and enough flames to make this reviewer relieved to be sitting near an exit. Yet French scenery designer Louis Desire’s spare, severe sets, like his costumes, aren’t compatible with a period piece, but more modernist in tone. No, the story’s not set in 21st century USA, but 15th century Spain. But what a “cheerful” choice!Īs the lead sentence of Naomi Andre’s article in LA Opera’s Performances Magazine puts it: “There is something kind of odd about Il Trovatore.” “Kind of?” Verdi’s turgid tragedy, with a nightmarish libretto mostly by Salvatore Cammarano, adapted Antonio Garcia Gutierrez’s play featuring witchcraft, burning at the stake, civil war, duels, mistaken or confused identities, thwarted love, “gypsies,” grim reapers straight out of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, imprisonment and other cheery plot points and bagatelles.

After more than a year offstage due to the you-know-what, LA Opera is back as Giuseppe Verdi’s 1853 Il Trovatore launches the 2021/22 Season for long-suffering Angeleno opera aficionados.

La opera il trovatore