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Il Trovatore, Verdi's 1853 maelstrom of passion, infanticide, double-crossing, and revenge, would be a barely palatable affair if it didn't contain some of his finest arias, a cracker of a tenor's role, and one of opera's most powerfully written characters in the old Gypsy woman, Azucena. Although Joan Sutherland is the headline star as the self-sacrificing lady-in-waiting Leonora, in truth the supreme assets of this 1983 Australia Opera production at Sydney Opera House are mezzo-soprano Lauris Elms's Azucena, a beautifully sung performance of haunted, wild-eyed sadness; and Sydney Nolan's wonderfully infernal sets. Sutherland came late to a part that allowed her to sing up a storm without taxing her rather stolid acting style. Her husband and musical director Richard Bonynge gives her the space to unleash some of Verdi's most fluidly opulent melodies--"D'amor sull'ali rosee" is a case in point--whose beauty is often at odds with the underlying horrors of the tale, based on a Spanish melodrama by Gutierrez. Sutherland has strong support from tenor Kenneth Collins as the doomed Manrico and Jonathan Summers as the vengeful Count. --Piers Ford
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