VERDI : LA FORZA DEL DESTINO

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 17th of July 2011 at 3.03 - 6  pm

VERDI: La Forza del Destino, an opera in four acts
Marquis of Calatrava..... Enrico Iori
Leonora........................ Violeta Urmana
Don Carlo..................... Roberto Frontali
Don Alvaro................... Salvatore Licitra
Curra............................ Antonella Trevisan
Preziosilla...................... Elena Maximova
Maestro Trabuco.......... Carlo Bosi
Padre Guardiano........... Robert Scandiuzzi
Fra Melitone................. Roberto De Candia
Alcade.......................... Filippo Polinelli
Florence May Festival Chorus & Orch/Zubin Mehta  
(recorded in the Teatro Comunale, Florence by Italian Radio)

COMPOSER
INTRODUCTION 
CHARACTERS
SYNOPSIS
STORYLINE 
BACKGROUND 
UNDERGROUND
ANALYSIS
LIBRETTO (Italian) 
LIBRETTO (English)


This Force of Destiny drama is said to be Verdi's Russian opera, and not only because it had its opening night in Saint Petersburg in 1862 (see Background).
I have never seen it in a theatre or a cinema, but I remember the report from the Metropera in 1960: when Leonard Warren (the American baritone, aged 48) was about to sing the lines in Act 3, Morir, tremenda cosa ("dying is a tremendous thing"), he actually died on stage, of a cerebral hemorrhage. Pavarotti shied away from the alleged curse of the opera with its Force of Destiny.
As it was performed again in 2006 at the Met, with Deborah Voigt, there are ample notes available from their archives, including pictures (see Storyline).
Honor and blood-vengeance are the driving forces, rather than blind fate, and it all stems from an accidental death when a pistol dropped by the Peruvian suitor Alvaro fires a bullet which kills a nobleman protecting his daughter Leonora from abduction (she was willing, but because she dithered she was caught in the act of elopement). She becomes a monk in a hermitage at a monastery. Her brother Carlo pursues Alvaro, mistakenly swears lifelong friendship with him (just so we can have another of those male-bonding duets), then wants to kill him, and when Alvaro is gravely wounded in battle, he wills him back to life so he can slay him with his own hand. In the end Alvaro wins the duel, Carlo stabs his sister, and Alvaro jumps off a cliff cursing fate. However, the revised ending has him closing with prayer in the presence of Leonora and a friar.
Notice that like Beethoven's Leonora, she disguises herself as a man.