Structure, Characters and Connections
From Gutiérrez's intricately constructed drama, Cammarano crafted a neatly symmetric design of four subdivisions each consisting of two scenes. Rather than being called ?acts,? each part bears an evocative title: Il duello ( The Duel), La gitana ( The Gypsy), Il figlio della zingara ( The Gypsy's Son), Il supplizio ( The Torture), a characteristic distinctive of Cammarano's libretti, but also an aspect used in the original play [the playwright called his partitions ?jornadas? ? there was a fifth title, El Convento (The Convent), which for obvious reasons could not be used]. Each scene dovetails to a cliffhanging conclusion, and each part to an exciting finale.
Going beyond the usual love triangle, the opera's four principals offer a rather complex love-hate-vengeance quadrangle with Manrico at its core. Typical of the headstrong (yet one dimensional) hero, he is a man of action living on the edge of society, a troubadour who enjoys chivalric pursuits such as knightly tournaments and putting poetry to song. Manrico is loved by both Azucena and Leonora, but hated by his (unknown) brother for being both a political enemy and romantic adversary. An unconscious sibling rivalry seems to persist as the two men alternate between fighting one another and pursuing the same woman, both with a high degree of diligence. Somewhat atypical of the romantic heroine, the smarter-minded Leonora still falls for the bad boy and tries to double-deal her more suitable spousal candidate (whom she grows to despise) by offering up her own life. The love-stricken, somewhat sadistic di Luna will stop at nothing to get his girl, only to be the cause of her demise. On the other hand, Leonora and her would-be mother-in-law have no connection and indeed no contact during the entire opera ? their only physical encounter is in the final scene, as Azucena sleeps. By the time she awakens, Leonora has already commended her soul.
As Verdi realized, by far the most interesting creation is Azucena, whose motivation is not always clear. The gypsy appears in only three scenes, yet her presence is felt throughout the entire opera. Like Rigoletto, she is driven by two passions, filial love and a thirst for vengeance. And, like the humpbacked jester, she unwittingly causes the death of her own child, here in one of the greatest gaffes in the annals of opera. The particularly gruesome (and uncommon) blunder of throwing her own baby into a roaring fire while summing a vision of her dying mother sets into motion a complicated psychological journey, which can only lead to self-destruction. Though she claims to love Manrico as her own child, her guilty conscience must be overwhelming (she even spills the beans at one point). And there are subtle indications that she treats Manrico slightly worse than she might have if he were her own progeny ? he is, after all, the spawn of her mortal enemy. As Manrico matures, it becomes evident that he has become an indispensable source of protection, for she is a wanted woman. Rather than gypsy pursuits, she encourages him to be a soldier of fortune and one who serves the side contrary to the di Lunas, as she hopes the two brothers will never meet. As Manrico becomes more valiant, his foster mother becomes more reckless, eventually straying into the enemy camp. At any moment she could reveal her trump card, Manrico's true identity, but chooses to remain silent. Knowing her own end is near, Azucena realizes Manrico is no longer necessary, and she sacrifices him for the greater goal, to avenge her mother's death.
Azucena's novelty and age required her to be cast as a mezzo-soprano, and Verdi would do what he did for the baritone just two years earlier in the character of Rigoletto. Down the pike we will see other principal dramatic mezzos in the likes of Ulrica (Un ballo in maschera), Eboli (Don Carlos) and Amneris ( Aida ). Her unique appearance and behavior also resembles Rigoletto in terms of the ?grotesque,? an aspect of Victor Hugo's romantic theater. Defying the Classical unities, Hugo liked to mix things up, contrasting the ugly or bizarre (Triboulet, to become Verdi's Rigoletto) with the ?sublime? (Francis I to become the Duke of Mantua). Though the hunchback would be a feature common to his dramas, the grotesque could also feature mental deformity and depravity masked by beauty [i.e. Lucrèce Borgia, which would become an opera by Donizetti (see the Bel Canto Zone: Lucretia Borgia )]. Azucena is a direct descendant of Hugo's world, which clearly had great appeal to Verdi on more than one occasion.
Commentators on opera tend to make connections between Verdi's themes to events in his life ? touching father-daughter moments, such as in Rigoletto, are frequently compared to the young composer's own tragedy as a father, and La traviata 's fallen Violetta is somewhat akin to his longtime companion, Giuseppina Strepponi, who equally had a dubious past. The prominence of Azucena has been tied to Verdi's own mother ? she died during Trovatore 's realization. Not unlike Manrico and Azucena, the composer's relationship with his mother was not a simple one. Although she had once saved her infant son from marauding Napoleonic soldiers as they invaded the composer's native Parma , at that particular juncture, Verdi was on the outs with both of his parents; in fact, relations were so poor that he communicated with them via an attorney. Both were God-fearing, twice-a-day church-going people, and neither approved of the composer's unmarried liaison with Strepponi, who in 1849 had accompanied him from Paris to settle in his native town of Busseto . The year before he had bought the farm at Sant'Agata, where his parents lived and managed, while he and his lover took up residence in town at the Palazzo Cavalli. As it turned out, the nosy Bussetians objected to the casual relationship and treated Strepponi as an outcast. An unwanted pregnancy didn't help matters much [as Mary Jane Phillips-Matz has proposed in her extensive biography of Verdi ( Verdi: a biography, Oxford University Press)]. Strepponi may indeed have given birth in April 1851 and left the baby anonymously at the orphanage, as was her custom (during her career as an opera singer, she had had at least three different children by as many men). A child pinned with the name ?Santa Streppini? can be traced to this period. Coincidentally, that child ended up at a farm bordering on Verdi's estate, where he and Strepponi would relocate to avoid the mounting public pressure. Verdi's parents were transferred to a tenant house in Vidalenzo.
