The Metropolitan's Opera's live in HD season gets underway this weekend with Giuseppe Verdi's Il trovatore. Opera Abbreviated will be your well-intended-- if cheeky-- guide to the operas on offer by the Met.
Now, I'm as brave a guy as they come, and I'm no dummy, but nobody ever finds it easy to explain the plot of Verdi's skewered love story of 16th Century Spain, involving family dynamics, an old Gypsy woman, burned babies, people in love with the wrong people, beheadings and people burned at the stake whilst singing great music.
I will say that Verdi's hapless troubabdour has been skewered by many, most famously the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1djDThK8e4
Okay, enough kidding. The plot may be goofy but the opera is not. Il trovatore, first performed in 1853, crowns Verdi's fantastic "middle period" which included Rigoletto and La traviata. It is a feast of cape twirling, sword fighting, high note passion, and great opportunities for singing.
Enjoy. Check back every week for further installments of Opera Abbreviated.
