The Anvil Chorus, "Vedi! le fosche notturne spoglie" (1853)
Gypsies hammer their anvils in rhythm at daybreak at the start of Act II
Recording: Unknown · CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Opera · Italian opera
Il trovatore
19 January 1853, Teatro Apollo, Rome
Giuseppe Verdi · libretto by Salvadore Cammarano
A gypsy woman, avenging her mother's burning, once threw a child on the fire — and grabbed the wrong baby. Twenty years later the two men she has raised as brothers are rivals in love and enemies in a civil war, and the truth comes out only after one has had the other executed. Wildly improbable and full of the best tunes Verdi ever wrote.
How to spot them
- ▸Fifteenth-century Spain, Aragon and Biscay: a civil war, a nun's veil taken, a gypsy camp and a tower prison
- ▸Soprano noblewoman, tenor rebel minstrel, baritone Count, and the mezzo who really drives the plot
- ▸The famous moment: a chorus of gypsies beat their anvils at dawn as the sun comes up
- ▸Quiz clues: El trovador by García Gutiérrez, a baby thrown on a pyre, a high C that isn't in the score
Arias & moments — listen
"Di quella pira" (1853)
The tenor's call to arms to save his mother from the stake; the interpolated high C is traditional, not Verdi's
Recording: Unknown · CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
"Stride la vampa" (1853)
The mezzo relives her mother's burning in a canzone with an obsessive, flickering rhythm
Recording: Unknown · CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
"Tacea la notte placida" (1853)
Leonora describes hearing a troubadour serenade her in the palace garden
Recording: Unknown · CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
"Ah sì, ben mio" (1853)
The tenor's tender wedding aria, sung moments before news of the pyre interrupts it
Recording: Unknown · CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
"Ai nostri monti" (1853)
Mother and son in the death cell dream of returning to their mountains
Recording: Unknown · CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
"Chi del gitano i giorni abbella?" (1853)
The gypsies' answer to their own question — a woman — rounding off the Act II chorus
Recording: Unknown · CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Quick-fire facts
- •The title means "The Troubadour"; the source is the Spanish play El trovador (1836) by Antonio García Gutiérrez.
- •The librettist Salvadore Cammarano died in July 1852 before finishing it; Leone Emanuele Bardare completed the text.
- •The premiere was at the Teatro Apollo, Rome, on 19 January 1853, less than two months before La traviata failed in Venice.
- •The principals are Manrico (tenor), Leonora (soprano), Count di Luna (baritone) and the gypsy Azucena (mezzo-soprano).
- •Azucena, meaning to burn the old Count's son, burned her own child by mistake and raised the stolen boy as Manrico; Manrico and di Luna are therefore brothers.
- •Caruso is said to have remarked that all it takes to stage it is the four greatest singers in the world.
- •The famous high C at the end of "Di quella pira" is a performing tradition; Verdi wrote the line lower.
- •The Anvil Chorus has been borrowed everywhere from Marx Brothers films to circus and brass-band repertoire.
- •Act IV's "Miserere" sets a chanted prayer for the dead against Leonora outside the tower and Manrico singing from within it.
Drill it — 9 cards
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Sources
- Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press) — Trovatore, Il
- Julian Budden — The Operas of Verdi
- Stanley Sadie (ed.) — The New Grove Dictionary of Opera