Just under the surface, every family has its unresolved problems and mysteries. Verdi’s Il Trovatore embraces this complexity - a Romani curse, disappeared children, mislaid identities, deadly fires, unfathomable loss. But something elemental emerges from the shadows and the embers, rekindled by Verdi’s thrumming, thrilling score - an extended family coming to terms with its secret history.

In a politically divided Spain, the royalist Count di Luna and the revolutionary leader Manrico love the same woman, Leonora. As the men face off, they become ensnared in a larger web of lies, murder, and revenge, spun in part by the fascinating Romani woman Manrico knows as his mother: Azucena, whose own mother’s death set the story in motion many years earlier. Azucena holds all the cards and plays them, with eerie certainty, right up to the last moment.