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Five Singing-Actors of the First Rank Raleigh
Raleigh Memorial Auditorium
04/17/2026 - & April 19*, 2026
Giuseppe Verdi: Il trovatore
Rebecca Krynski-Cox (Leonora), Jonathan Burton (Manrico), Deborah Nansteel (Azucena), Andrew Manea (Count di Luna), Ricardo Lugo (Ferrando), Francesca Bushman (Inez), Jacob Cortes (Ruiz), Thomas M. Keefe (Old Gypsy)
North Carolina Opera Chorus, Jeanie Wozenkraft-Ornellas (Chorus Master), North Carolina Opera Orchestra, James Meena (Conductor)
Chuck Hudson (Stage Director), Michael Schweikardt (Scenic Designer), Glenn Avery Breed (Costume Designer), Martha Ruskai (Wig and Makeup Designer), Ross Kolman (Lighting Designer), Devon Carter (Supertitle Operator)
J. Burton (© Eric Waters)
A missing baby swapped at birth; a gypsy burned at the stake; a lady‑in‑waiting faithful unto death; two men, actually brothers, fighting for her hand; a famous anvil chorus. It was parodied by Gilbert and Sullivan, also by the late comedienne Anna Russell, and famously, the Marx Brothers had a go at it, as well, in A Night at the Opera.
Any aficionado will know immediately that Verdi’s Il trovatore is the opera at hand, one saddled with a storyline that defies even basic operatic belief—a form known for an abundance of convoluted plots—but Verdi’s work is also wedded to some of the composer’s most beautiful and inspired melody, its saving grace.
Composed in 1853 during what Verdi later called “my years in the galley,” honing and perfecting his skills as a dramatist, Trovatore is sandwiched between Rigoletto (1851) and La traviata (also dating from 1853), defining this period of his greatest melodic inventiveness. This trio of titles would swiftly make his name synonymous with Italian opera, establishing him as a major force in lyric theatre of the Risorgimento.
It was tenor Enrico Caruso who, legend has it, summed it all up a century or so ago by saying, that to stage Il Trovatore, all that is needed is “the four greatest voices in the world,” a nearly impossible task to fulfill these days. Such is this opera’s undeniable draw for artists and audiences alike (whether stretching credulity or in the presence of greatness) that nearly every luminary of the past century—from Caruso to Callas and Pavarotti—has tried his or her hand at Verdi’s Spanish melodrama, the second of four works he set on the Iberian peninsula.
While opinions differ as to what constitutes “greatest” (which is largely a generational concept, anyway), assembling a mini‑constellation of such stars today, then, can seem a fearsome hurdle to surmount, and Raleigh’s North Carolina Opera didn’t have them, either.
But what the company did have, and in abundance, was even more valuable: not four but five singing-actors of the first rank, each of whom had something unique to say with his or her character’s motivations and music. Each artist offered up human portraits, so persuasively presented that one might have actually forgotten that he was watching a tale of fiction. And all of this, in today’s rushed electronic age, is even rarer still.
Soprano Rebecca Krynski-Cox, as Leonora, cuts a sympathetic figure and moves well onstage. This lady‑in‑waiting is perhaps the most loyal character in Italian opera, aside from Puccini’s Butterfly, her music and text expertly fashioned by Verdi and his librettist to declaim her steadfastness. An artist who gives meaning to Verdi’s intentions is required, and NC Opera’s soprano was generally well‑matched to her assignment. Her voice, solid in the middle and lower reaches, is let down only by her uppermost range, which can sound startlingly disembodied from her overall vocal production, leading one to wonder whether at some point she sang mostly in her healthy lower registers as a mezzo‑soprano. This issue prevents her from being labeled a verdiana, but as this two‑performance run was a role debut for her, this will no doubt come in time.
Tenor Jonathan Burton was a revelation as the troubadour of the title, Manrico. His was an old‑fashioned stand‑and‑sing performance, but what a voice he owns! Sporting evenly-knit registers along with high notes that ring out confidently, his was a thrilling piece of singing. Manrico’s Act III test piece, the cabaletta “Di quella pira,” with its unwritten and exposed high C [traditionally expected], proved a case in point. Many a worried tenor will request a drop in key before beginning this treacherous aria, but not this indomitable artist, who strode the stage, brandishing a sword, and unfurling a steady stream of burnished tone. At a time of definite paucity of heroic voices on the international opera stage, this tenor fills a much‑needed void.
Baritone Andrew Manea, heard here to advantage in the company’s recent run of Verdi’s Ernani, proved the perfect foil to Burton’s Manrico. His virile vocal and physical posturing made this Count di Luna less the traditional mustache-twirling villain and more a flesh‑and‑blood human being of bruised ego with whom one could relate. He, too, poured out refulgent sound from his first entrance, and was a pleasure to hear. In common with the evening’s Leonora, Manea was also trying out his role for the first time, and presumably found it as congenial an assignment as did his enthusiastic audience.
The gypsy Azucena, around whose mad ravings the story revolves—so central to the plotline that Verdi considered naming the opera for her—was here entrusted to the impressive mezzo‑soprano Deborah Nansteel. Having earlier witnessed her mother’s execution, Azucena spends much of the opera recounting that traumatic episode, which today’s post‑Freudian psychoanalysis would term PTSD. As Verdi, who would never have heard of such things, fashioned the role, her anxieties are made plain with dramatic outbursts and many high-lying phrases requiring a powerful singing-actress. Nansteel is such a talent, riding the orchestra as it commented loudly on the horror she had witnessed and then wrapping her in the protective blanket of its aural embrace. Nansteel’s bright tonal quality and overall strength surmounted every bit of this, making her Azucena the central figure she was intended to be, proving this artist a highly valuable stage commodity.
Bass Ricardo Lugo, as Ferrando, the Count’s retainer and the first to recount the expository history of the missing baby and stake‑burning in the opera’s opening scene, sang his narrative with a resonant bass voice of such quality and substance that one immediately sat up to take note.
Mezzo soprano Frances Bushman as Inez, sang her lines with sensitivity, as did tenor Jacob Cortes’ handsome Ruiz, his first outing in the higher register since working his way up from years as a baritone. Thomas M. Keefe completed the roster as the Old Gypsy.
Jeanie Wozencraft-Ornellas’ chorus rang out securely and without blemish, the envy of many a larger company’s ensemble. The North Carolina Opera Orchestra, too, played beautifully, underpinning the stage picture as to the manner born.
Stage Director Chuck Hudson moved his principals thoughtfully and with purpose. His idea of showing actors playing out the gypsy mother’s gruesome dealings while a principal artist narrated her story, was a genius stroke that should be incorporated into Trovatore productions everywhere.
The traditional and charmingly evocative settings—atmospherically lit by Ross Kolman—were created for Florida’s Sarasota Opera, which in 1989 embarked on a 28‑season survey of Verdi’s stage works, becoming the first U.S. company to present all of the master’s vocal music-- Requiem included-- along with French versions of several of the operas. In the case of Trovatore, it was staged twice in Italian as part of the company’s cycle and once as Le Trouvère, Verdi’s 1856 second, French premiere of the work, in Brussels.
Costuming was generally flattering to the artists. Designed by Glenn Avery Breed and provided by Wardrobe Witchery, they worked well with Martha Ruskai’s wigs and makeup, completing the attractive stage picture.
At the helm and responsible for a performance that crackled with intensity was maestro James Meena. A singer’s conductor of the first order, he knows Italian opera thoroughly, his distinguished pacing of Verdi’s blood‑and‑guts score possessing all the conventional 19th century elements the composer would have expected. One hopes to hear him again here.
With an overall metro area of some two- million people, Raleigh boasts top schools, medical centers, sports teams, and North Carolina Opera, which consistently mounts productions any opera company would be proud to put on its stage. This it continues to demonstrate time and again, repeatedly adding to Raleigh’s ranking as amongst the best places to live in the country, a place where people do care passionately about opera.
Carl J. Halperin
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