Can rivals in love become brothers in arms? A Lord troubadour, a Gypsy and a beautiful woman are linked by life, love and secrets. They fight, they sing and, eventually, discover the truth in a brave and spectacular masterpiece. The action moves from the castles of Il Conte di Luna to the battlegrounds of a conflict driven by dim memories of ancient wrongs and promises of vengeance, It is passionate, senseless and absolutely spectacular, from Manrico’s heroic arias to the Gypsies' famous Anvil Chorus.
Many musical items own a great part of their expressiveness to the melody style that composer had been developing since his early years and reached its full maturity in The Troubadour. Arias commence typically silently, even unimpressively, and develop gradually into rising melody waves, finally reaching the climax in big comprehensive phrases which demand full range of voice. No wonder that famous Caruso once said that “all you need for the good performance of an opera is only the four best opera singers in the world…”. Indeed, if Verdi had not extracted what was the most important for him at the time from the more than complicated libretto – striking characters and thrilling drama situations – hardly would we still, a century and a half after its creation, talk about it (besides Rigoletto and La Traviata) as a crucial place of his romantic trilogy. The Troubadour is the work of heroic pathos and irrepressible lust for revenge, opera of rich mutual rhythm impact where all synthetic power of Verdi’s music can be perceived, music that creates organic connection and gives a common stylistic framework to heterogeneous scene pictures.