Performance History
The opera's immense popularity, with some 229 productions worldwide in the following three years, is illustrated by the fact that "in Naples, for example, where the opera in its first three years had eleven stagings in six theaters, the performances totaled 190".
It was first performed in Paris in Italian on 23 December 1854 by the Théâtre-Italien at the Salle Ventadour. The cast included Lodovico Graziani as Manrico and Adelaide Borghi-Mamo as Azucena. A French version translated by E. Milien Pacini and called Le trouvère was first performed at La Monnaie in Brussels on 20 May 1856 and at the Paris Opera's Salle Le Peletier on 12 January 1857. Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie attended the latter performance. Verdi made some changes to the score for the French premiere of Le trouvère including the addition of music for the ballet in act 3 and several revisions focusing on the music of Azucena, including an extended version of the finale of act 4, to accommodate the role's singer Borghi-Mamo. Some of these changes have even been used in modern performances in Italian.
Il trovatore was first performed in the US on 2 May 1855 at the recently-opened Academy of Music in New York while its UK premiere took place on 10 May 1855 at Covent Garden in London.
Today, almost all performances use the Italian version, although in 2002 the French version, Le trouvère appeared as part of the Sarasota Opera's "Verdi Cycle" of all the composer's work, to be completed by 2013.
Read more about this topic: Il Trovatore
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