The Father Superior (a/k/a The Abbott, The Father Guardian). Or, we could say, the abusive regimental chaplain, which is how Trelinski has conceived him—and, as noted above, doubled with the Marchese. At the monastery, the program’s synopsis tells us, Leonora “is stunned by the resemblance to her father,” and when the Father orders Melitone to assemble the brothers with lit candles for Leonora’s initiation, they show up with whips for a flagellation ceremony. In Act 3 he appears as an apparently blind person burbling his admonitions to Melitone at a subway station (for a few minutes, I was genuinely confused), then, in the final scene, as the ghost of the Marchese, in which guise he offers the Padre’s last healing lines. Of all the production’s misfits of word and music to action and appearance, this is the most flagrant. All the wonderful music of the Act 2 scene thrown away, and an auteurial nose-thumbing at the character’s function at the end.

As if the contradictions in the case of the Marchese were not enough, Solomon Howard is handed the greater part of an impossible task with the Padre Guardiano. Although he does not have the authoritative, rolling basso cantante or enough grounding in sostenuto singing based on the messa di voce needed for a full realization of the role (models would be Pinza, Pasero, Siepi, Ghiaurov, or, with tolerance for Slavic vowels and some gravel in the tone, Christoff), he produced some solid phrases and worked diligently to make what little sense he could of the mandated behavioral absurdities.

Preziosilla. War has never had a generally good reputation. Death, destruction, and suffering have always been deplored, especially by those for whom war offers no advantages. But when Preziosilla makes her entrance in the inn at Hornachuelos, her first words are “Viva la guerra!“, and as the men beckon her, she urges them on their way to Italy to fight the “Germans,” and promises that she will be with them. ^(I) The song that follows, “Al suon del tamburo,” has as a refrain “È bella la guerra,” enthusiastically echoed by the guests. We are reminded—and will be again, more forcefully, in the Act 3 encampment scene, that war has its uses for some people, and that Verdi and Piave went to a great deal of trouble to show that this can even be true for some among the common folk. Preziosilla is a Spanish gypsy. She tells fortunes and dances. She follows the troops, and lifts spirits wherever she goes. Like the other character we meet only in the inn and encampment scenes, the muleteer/peddler Trabuco, she adapts to situations as they arise. As she shows us with her instant penetration of Carlo’s “Pereda” identity, she is shrewd and knows how to read people. She’s obligated to no codes, has no reason to cloak her identity, and at least for so long as she retains her youth, good looks, and energy, she’ll survive and even prosper. The tone of the inn and encampment scenes is celebrative and joyous. These people love the war, its chaos, its randomness of opportunity. With structures broken open and all left to chance, things are looking up for them. “Long live the madness!” they sing, and the answer to a duel between two enraged aristos from the world of family codes is the sound of the drum and a rattling “Rataplan” chorus, led by Prezosilla. The music of these sequences is too unsophisticated and uplifting to be taken as ironic—the scenes just won’t play that way.