It is remarkable that one of Italy’s lesser-known opera houses, though bearing the name of the great composer – Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi – presented such a profound production of Il Trovatore. The audience was largely conservative (around 80 percent of the spectators seemed to be of retirement age), and one can hardly imagine that they would welcome an excessively radical directorial concept. Anyway, the production was notable not for extravagant or complicated staging, b