Italy is the country of the wonderful music called opera. And in Italy everywhere you go you find tenors, baritones, sopranos, mezzo-sopranos and, of course, opera shows where they display their talents. And summer is full of festivals. Among them is Macerata Summer Festival, a show of which I had the privilege to watch - The Troubadour, by Giuseppe Verdi.

Modern mounting. This would announce something bad. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t like modern mountings, done only for the sake of being different, pointlessly, and I’m repeating the idea now because I actually enjoyed the mounting I found at Macerata. Moreover, the performance had surprising elements, which I am going to describe further.

The most important was... the burnt child. All throughout the opera, from time to time, a child appeared on the scene, walking slowly, silently, his skin and clothes burnt, representing Azucena’s child’s ghost, burnt at stake by its own mother, as it is said. If in all the mountings that I’ve seen until now (Bucharest, Southampton, Ruse, Craiova, Cluj-Napoca, Timisoara, Brasov, Verona) the spectator imagines the child, the presence of the child burnt at stake gives you chills on the spine, at least at its first and second appearance!

Behind the scene there was a huge wall. (Search on google "Macerata opera house" and you will find immediately images with the place / building where the festival takes place, both the public and the scene). There wasn’t much decor, but the play’s mounting prevented us to miss it. Several white lamps lit one by one. Up, in a tower set up by the wall, was the witch, tied by a red, phosphorescent thread, to the burnt child. The red thread is another very interesting element, symbolizing the burning at stake (the witch will be wrapped in this very beautiful and suggestive thread, visible in the dark), but Azucena’s catching and tying in the third act is also done with it.

"Tace la notte placida", then the first encounter in the opera between Manrico and the count of Luna. It takes place... on the tables (a few long tables, laid as for a wedding), and the two of them are fighting with scythes instead of swords! And, unlike other mountings, the action here presents how the count injures Manrico, who hardly escapes, preceding the action in the second act, when Manrico is hurt and still in the recovery period.

"Vedi le fosche notturne spoglie", alias the gypsies’ choir - where all were dressed in black - then the burnt child shoes up. Azucena starts hesitantly, but she clears her throat and "Stride la vampa" echoes in a dark broken by some flames that Azucena lights up while singing, and in the background her mother is "packed" in the red phosphorescent thread, the very inspired visual metaphor through which her burning at stake is represented.

The burnt child... the burnt child seems to be everywhere.

The third act. Azucena is caught... and tied with the red phosphorescent thread. Then, "Di quella pira", and, different from other mountings, on the scene takes place the fight of the two, at the end of the battle being shown how Manrico is captured by the count and is, of course, :-), tied with the red phosphorescent thread, as is Leonora in the last act, when she dies. But, although this is the impression I made, the red thread didn’t have an annoying or dominant presence.

The show I was present at took place on July the 27th 2013. I already have the sketch plan with the place where I will be on July the 27th 2014, and this is at Macerata, because then will be presented the grandissima "Aida". Preceded and followed (there are 3-4 representations of each opera) by "Tosca" and "La Traviata".

Distribution
The count of Luna: Simone Piazzola
Leonora: Susanna Branchini
Azucena: Enkelejda Shkosa
Manrico: Aquiles Machado
Ferrando: Luciano Montanaro

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