[Met Tour] CID:93360



Il Trovatore
Auditorium, Atlanta, Georgia, Sat, April 24, 1926




Il Trovatore (151)
Giuseppe Verdi | Salvatore Cammarano
Manrico
Giovanni Martinelli

Leonora
Rosa Ponselle

Count Di Luna
Mario Basiola

Azucena
Marion Telva

Ferrando
Léon Rothier

Ines
Laura Robertson

Ruiz
Giordano Paltrinieri

Gypsy
Vincenzo Reschiglian


Conductor
Tullio Serafin







Review 1:

O. B. Reeler in unidentified Atlanta newspaper
“Trovatore”’ Closes Greatest Atlanta Season of Opera
“Miserere” Given as Encore Setting Precedent for Metropolitan, Which Never Repeats Numbers at Home

There is only one line for it — the good old blaze of glory. That is exactly what the sixteenth season of Metropolitan opera went out in. A blaze of glory, with the greatest singing opera in all this world —"Trovatore," God bless it!


The greatest season; Colonel Peel says so, solemnly. The greatest attendance; the most brilliant audiences; the crest of the wave in enthusiasm; and all the other superlatives, that we used to employ in the good old days, when Metropolitan opera was a novelty, and we were unsophisticated and knew nothing about blase, except that it was a trick word and difficult to pronounce.


"Tannhaüser" in the afternoon, for an orchestral opera; a music drama, and dear old "Trovatore" in the evening, standing them up and knocking them down — the greatest singing opera the world ever heard.


A blaze of glory; that was it, the old auditorium, packed to the gunwales again. A great cast, inspired by the occasion and singing Verdi music as only Verdi music can be sung. They stopped the show at least once per scene, and there are four acts of two scenes each, making eight stations in all. Some scenes they stopped it twice. For the first time since I can remember, which is a considerable time, they had to repeat "Miserere." Encoring the Lucia 'Sextet" and the Rigoletto "Quartet" is a tradition, even a convention, in Atlanta. The Metropolitan at home is like Shakespeare; it doesn't repeat. But in Atlantia, the Met repeats these two numbers and now the "Miserere" has a precedent.


Capacity Crowd at Finale

The concluding opera caught a capacity crowd right on the button, right at the first gong, just as "Bohème" did Wednesday evening. Leon Rothier as Ferrando, the gigantic, basso, landed left and right, in the first scene, and from then on the audience was song-drunk and groggy. In rapid, succession, Ponselle, Martinelli, Basiola and Telva landed right where it would do the most good. Arias, duets, trios, quartets and variegated ensembles let fly the singing-music with an effect like music-machine-gun fire. When the audience was reeling and unfit to continue, it protected itself by an ovation. It needed eight or ten ovations to get the audience by the three hours, and it wound up with eleven baskets of roses for Little Rosa, the first red-headed Lenoroa who was having a field day.


Rosa crashed the gate of the county jail three times and dragged out Martinelli, after the "Misersere” to make his acknowledgment to the thundering herd out in front. It seems a pity she could not have kept him outside and thus averted the tuneful double-tragedy which ensued; but I suppose it would not have been opera.


Basiola, the new baritone, I shall always consider as making his real debut Saturday evening. He had something to sing in "Trovatore" and he sang it. His voice sounded at least twice as big as in the Wolf- Ferrari opera in which he debuted. Right off the eel, in the tumultuous trio with Ponselle and Martinelli in the first act, Basiola got going, and held his end up against some of the most vigorous singing ever done here. Martinelli evidently had gone in training for the windup, and he was in an exberant mood. Miss Ponselle had put on a red wig and taken off upwards of 20 pounds, I should guess, and she made a tall and queenly and extremely redheaded Leonora — and sang better than I ever heard her before.


Miss Telva, too, was getting a singing vacation after Wolf-Ferrari, and she went to it with vast fervor in this role of the tragic gypsy.


And that's about the way of it. A great singing cast found a great audience of singing-fans, and hit them on the nose with the greatest of singing operas. There always is in my mind a sort of uncertainty as to which is the more tuneful “Trovatore" or "Rigoletto," and usually it is settled by the one I hear last. Well, that would be "Trovatore," But I think it always will be Trovatore."


“Miserere" Hardest Punch

And it was the old "Miserere" that landed the hardest punch of the week; never forget that, or the stately and redheaded Leonora dragging Manrico out of the hoosgow, to bow to the thundering herd, which kept right on thundering until they sang it again — and then kept right on thundering.


The finest season of all; no guarantors to be called on; a financial and an artistic success, as they all say. Metropolitan opera again is paying its way, in Atlanta. Otto Kahn was right; Atlanta is a good, game town, and a town with a vision. The Atlanta Music Festival Association is a good, game association, with a vision. And while we are on that subject, at the crest of the tide of opera popularity in Atlanta, with the ringing Verdi music in our ear and the blood stinging.



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