Publication Date: Friday Feb 20, 1998

"Il Trovatore's" muscular trio

Working through one of opera's most convoluted plots to mine one of its richest scores, West Bay Opera has come up with a captivating production of Verdi's "Il Trovatore," featuring a powerful triumvirate of principal singers.

The labyrinthine story begins with Ferrando (William Pickersgill), a sergeant in the Spanish Army, who relates to his company the tale of a gypsy woman who gives the Count di Luna's infant son the "evil eye," causing the baby to fall ill. For this she is summarily burned at the stake, but not without her revenge: Later that day, the Count's son is reported missing, and the charred remains of a baby are discovered in the funeral pyre.

From there, it's harder to follow than a full season of "Melrose Place," but stage director David Sloss lends some assistance by turning the civil war of the house of Aragon and Prince Urgel into the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. This creates a clearer distinction between the resultant warring factions--the Count's state battalion in their khaki uniforms, the gypsy Manrico and his more casually dressed rebel guerrillas--as well as giving set designer Peter Crompton a chance to play around with a seemingly endless array of bombed-out fortresses (with working jeeps!).

As far as the acting goes, none could compare with Zoila Munoz, who plays the martyred gypsy's daughter, Azucena. Munoz appeared so possessed in "Condotta ell'era in ceppi," the narration in which she confesses to accidentally throwing her own child on the pyre, then kidnapping the Count's son (now Manrico) in revenge, that I half expected her to hurl herself on the audience and start tearing us to pieces.

In the role of Manrico (who after this rant manages to still believe Azucena's protestations that he is, indeed, her real son) we have Bay Area veteran Ravil Atlas, whose soaring, forceful tenor maintains a strong presence throughout the evening. A bit of a bug kept Atlas from going full-force on "Di quella pira," the troubadour's famed call to arms, but he made up for it by treating lighter moments, such as the directly preceding duet with his ladylove, Leonora, with a delicacy rare among tenors.

The real treat of the evening, however, was Julie Kierstine, whose Leonora creates an added rivalry between the younger Count di Luna (the slaughtered and/or kidnapped baby's older brother) and Manrico by making them both fall in love with her. In Act II, Scene Three, Kierstine made a memorable, heroic attack on Verdi's back-to-back-to-back soprano arias (the third, in fact, is often omitted to prevent the soprano from collapsing on stage). To the famed Adagio, "D'Amor sull'ali rosee," she lent a sumptuous array of coloratura ornaments, including several splendid pianissimos and a spinning, pulsing trill that absolutely mesmerizes the listener. She is a treasure.

The production's faults were small but worth noting. Baritone Andrew Eisenmann sang Count di Luna competently but stiffly, flattening out his vowels until they sounded more Texan than Italian. The men's chorus threw out some jittery entrances in the first scene before settling down in a nice groove for the rest of the night. And Ernest Fredric Knell's strings, though they and the rest of the orchestra performed solidly all night, picked a really bad time--the intro to Leonora's previously noted Adagio--to go badly out of tune.

Oh, and one last thing. Please ditch the battlefield maps flashed onto the Lucie Stern Theater's projector-screen curtains between scenes. I kept expecting a toy plane to stream by, leaving little red dashes a la "Casablanca."

What: "Il Trovatore," musical direction by Ernest Fredric Knell; directed by David Sloss

When: Feb. 20-22; Friday and Saturday, 8:25 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m.

Where: Lucie Stern Theater, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto

Cost: $15-$30

Information: 424-9999 

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