When the Marx Brothers film A Night at the Opera was made in 1935 Il Trovatore was one of the most frequently played of Verdi’s Operas and was considered to be almost THE archetypal Italian Opera – with plenty of politics, drama and lots of deaths.
These days , it is performed much less frequently, perhaps because it was so badly lampooned in the film for it’s implausable plot , with cinema audiences being unable to hear the chimes of the Anvil Chorus from the Opera without imagining the escaping Marx Brothers hurling bread rolls and then whacking their pursuers over the head with frying pans in time to the music, as shown in the famous film!
The film, acording to my Google search this evening, still appears in the top 100 films of all time – Verdi’s Opera’s popularity is less enduring but with a revolutionary sub-plot akin to Les Miserables and the current chaos in Italian politics – who knows? It might make a renaissance! Verdi was pretty busy whilst he wrote it as he was working on two other operas – one of which was La Traviata – at the same time!
However, last night at Sydney Opera House I saw Il Trovatore live for the first time, and , providing one doesn’t analyse the likelihood of the plot too deeply, it is a great opera to see – visually striking with some great tunes – and it was just exciting to be enjoying it inside such a fabulous building.
In the interval we enjoyed a glass of champagne in the top bar overlooking the harbour and the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge.
So, if the weather holds out, our last adventure before returning home to London is what is referred to as “The Climb of your Life – Sydney Harbour Bridge
