Verdi's "Il Trovatore" Met Saturday Matinee Broadcast on April 30

Sondra Radvanovsky as Leonora. Photo by
Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
St. Louis Public Radio will carry the Met Opera broadcast of Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore on their HD channel, KWMU-3 beginning at 12 noon. You may also listen to a live stream of the broadcast. Approximate running time 2 hours, 45 minutes with an intermission at approximately 1:10 p.m.

The Met's web site says: "David McVicar’s popular production returns with Patricia Racette, Sondra Radvanovsky, Dolora Zajick, Marcelo Álvarez, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, and Željko Lucic. Marco Armiliato conducts."

In the April 21, 2011, edition of the New York Times, Zachary Woolfe said:

With its cackling Gypsies, mistaken identities and secret brothers, the convoluted plot of Verdi’s Il Trovatore can seem like the setup for a joke. Already verging on chaos, it makes a natural backdrop for the anarchic final scene of the Marx Brothers’ Night at the Opera.

Il Trovatore overcomes its absurdities, though, with its vitality, its irresistible melodies and tightly driven rhythms. Oh, and it helps if you have four amazing singers.

That is where things can get tough. Nothing arouses apocalyptic lamentation in opera fans like the loaded question “Where are today’s great Verdi singers?” For a revival of Il Trovatore that opened on Wednesday, the Metropolitan Opera reassembled the core cast from the premiere of David McVicar’s 2009 production, and it gave an accurate snapshot of the company’s current Verdi lineup: gamely energetic, effective if unglamorous, it gets the job done.

The High Definition transmission of Il Trovatore will be presented at AMC Esquire 7, 6706 Clayton Road; St. Louis Mills 18; 5555 Saint Louis Mills Boulevard; AMC Chesterfield 14, 3000 Chesterfield Mall; and AMC Showplace Edwardsville 13, 6333 Center Grove Road, Edwardsville, Illinois. Click here to buy tickets.