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Giuseppe VERDI (1813-1901) La forza del destino - melodramma in four
acts (revised 1869 version)
Marquis
of Calatrava - Giuseppe Nicodemo (bass); Donna Leonora,
his daughter - Susanna Branchini (sop); Curra,
her chambermaid - Silvia Balistreri (sop); Don Alvaro,
lover of Leonora and of Royal Inca Indian descent - Renzo
Zulian (ten); Don Carlo of Vargas, Leonora’s brother -
Marco Di Felice (bar); Preziosilla - Tiziana Carraro (mezzo);
Fra Melitone - Paolo Rumetz (bass-bar); Padre Guardiano
- Paolo Battaglia (bass); Mastro Trabuco, muleteer – Antonio
Feltracco (ten); Alcade - Luca Dall’Amico (ten); Spanish
military surgeon – Romano Franci (ten)
Orchestra Filarmonica Veneta/Lukas Karytinos
Director and costume designer: Pier Francesco Maestrini
Set designer: Alfredo Troisi
Video director: Tiziano Mancini
rec. live, Teatro Communale di Modena, Italy, January 2006
Picture format: NTSC/Colour/16:9
Sound formats: Dolby digital 5.1/2.0
Menu language: English. Subtitles: Italian (original language),
English, German, French and Spanish. Notes and synopsis in
Italian, English, German and French DYNAMIC 33512 [181:00]
After
the premiere of Un Ballo in Maschera in Rome, and
with no contracts pressing, the composer and his wife did
not return immediately to their home in Busseto. Verdi was
made an honorary member of the Accademia Filharmonica Romana
and the Rome impresario, Jacovacci, attempted to persuade
him to sign a contract for a new opera. Verdi was 46 years
old and had composed twenty-three operas in twenty years.
Because of the trouble with the censor in Naples - where Un
Ballo in Maschera should have been staged - he had faced
the pressures of composition for nearly a year. He announced
to a small circle of friends, including Jacovacci, that he
had given up composing and intended to return to his farm
and enjoy the fruits of his labours in a more relaxed manner.
Cavour, the father of the fight for the unification of Italy,
persuaded Verdi to stand for Italy’s first National Parliament.
He did so and was elected and attended assiduously until
Cavour’s premature and untimely death when Verdi’s interest
declined. Meanwhile in December 1860, whilst Verdi was away
in Turin on political business, Giuseppina received a letter
from a friend in Russia. Also enclosed was an invitation
from the great Italian dramatic tenor Enrico Tamberlick,
who Verdi knew and admired. Acting on behalf of the Imperial
Theatre of St. Petersburg the letter invited Verdi to write
an opera for the following season. Despite the likelihood
of temperatures of minus 22 degrees below zero, the prospect
of a visit to Imperial Russia appealed to Giuseppina and
she promised to use all endeavours to persuade Verdi to accept.
Whether it was her skills of persuasion, the fact that he
was missing the theatre, or the conditions of the contract,
and particularly of a large fee that would help fund the
major alterations at Sant’Agata, Verdi eventually agreed.
After
haggling about a suitable subject for the new opera, Verdi
settled on the Spanish romantic drama Don Alvaro, o La
fuerza de sino by Angel Perez de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas.
Verdi asked his long-time collaborator Piave to provide the
libretto. As usual the composer drew up the synopsis for
his librettist to versify. It is sometimes said that the
story is too rambling and full of improbabilities. That may
be so, but it certainly inspired Verdi to compose some of
his most wonderful melodies and fully characterise the roles.
The dark core of Rivas’s drama involves scenes set among
the common people including a gypsy fortune-teller. Verdi
lightens the dark plot with its multiple deaths somewhat
further than the play. To do so he uses a scene from Schiller’s Wallenstein
Lager involving a panorama of life in a military encampment
including soldiers, vivandieres, gypsies and a monk who
preaches in the funniest and most delightful manner in the
world. The monk would become Melitone in the opera and
is often seen as a precursor to the eponymous comic role
in his great final opera, Falstaff. What La forza
del destino does demand are full-toned Verdi voices.
It is no opera for upstart lyric voices. This is best illustrated
by the fact that when Verdi and his wife made the long journey
to St. Petersburg for the premiere in December 1861 and found
the soprano contracted for the role of Leonora to be ill
it was not possible to find a substitute singer from the
company roster; the whole production was postponed for one
year. When the opera was eventually premiered on 10 November
1862 it was a success with the Tsar attending, inviting the
Verdis to his box and later investing him with the highest
state honours.
Verdi, however, was not wholly happy about the ending of
the opera with its depressing multiple deaths in the final
scene. Aware
of its challenges, he also withheld the score from theatres
that he considered incapable of doing it justice. He had
recognised the need for alterations early on when he transposed
the tenor aria in act 3 downward on the basis that only Tamberlick
was capable of meeting its demands. The Paris Opéra offered
the opportunity of staging the work with the addition of
a ballet, an offer that he declined considering it would
make the evening far too long. Verdi eventually got round
to a revision when Ricordi proposed performances at La Scala.
The revised La Forza del Destino, the version performed
here,was premiered at La Scala on 27 February 1869.
The premiere also marked a rapprochement between Verdi and
the theatre. The alterations of the score from the original
1862 version are significant rather than major. They involve
the substitution of the prelude by a full overture, which
nowadays is often played as a concert piece. There was also
a major revision of the end of act three including the removal
of the demanding tenor double aria. The whole final scene
of the opera is amended. The triple deaths are avoided being
replaced by the Father Guardian’s benediction as Leonora
dies and Alvaro is left alive.
On DVD, the lavish nature of the original 1862 mise-en-scène can
now be appreciated in our day. The Mariinsky Theatre of St
Petersburg performed La Forza in 1998 in reconstructions
of the original 1862 sets; these are quite magnificent and
atmospheric (Arthaus Music 100 078). The appropriately big-voiced
solo singers of the Mariinsky including Galina Gorchakova
as Leonora match the sets. At the time of writing two DVD
issues of the revised 1869 version are readily available.
Both exemplify something of performance practice in respect
of either sequencing
or cuts. The Met recording of 1984, in sets dating back to
1952, features Leontyne Price, perhaps the greatest Verdi
soprano of her generation alongside Domingo as Alvaro and
Nucci as Don Carlo, the brother who pursues the two lovers
believing they have sullied the family name (see review).
The performance is given in three acts with, significantly,
a re-ordering of the original act three, which finishes with
the recognition and duel duet between Alvaro and Carlo rather
than Preziosilla’s Rataplan as Verdi intended. An
earlier DVD in black and white dating from 1958 has Renata
Tebaldi as Leonora alongside Franco Corelli as Alvaro, Bastianini
as Carlo and Christoff as Padre Giardano.
The presence of such noted singers on all those recordings indicates
not merely the casting by international opera houses, but
the vocal demands of the work. But the reordering of the
scenes in the Met production and the black and white limitations
leave a gap in the catalogue for an imaginative production
with appropriate-sized voices in a modern recording. Opera
lovers will remember the audio recording under Muti from
La Scala with Freni, a Mimi to die for, well out of her depth
as Leonora. I doubt if the Leonora on this recording has
the vocal equipment to sing a passable Mimi, even in the
small-sized Teatro Communale di Modena where this performance
was recorded. She is the most seriously over-parted singer
in a cast lacking voices of the required character and vocal
strength for this demanding work. Her Me pellegrina (Act
1 Ch. 2), and Pace, mio Dio (Act 4 Ch. 4) are painful
to listen to. Similarly her acting has little to commend
it either and there are few signs of directorial help. She
is not alone in being in need of such assistance. The sets
in act three (Chs. 1-5) are particularly inept and cramped
in width and the tenor and baritone have to make their own
way, looking rather over-dressed for a battle scene. The
first scene has the only piece of directorial imagination
in the whole evening with Alvaro being worked on upstage
by the surgeon whilst Carlo wonders about the identity of
his new and brave friend and agonizing over his promise not
to open the sealed package that has been passed to him. He
does, however, find a portrait of his sister and realises
the identity of his fellow soldier and the drama of the promise
duet Solenne in quest’ora turns to a duel challenge
(Act 3 Ch.2). The dramatic confrontations between the two
in act three, preceded by Alvaro’s demanding La vita e
inferno (Act 3 Ch. 1) and Carlo’s Morir! Tremend cosa and Urna
fatale (Act 3 Ch. 3) require big-voiced Verdi singing
of the highest order. Well, the tenor here, Renzo
Zulian, is no Tamberlick. He evinces
strain at the top of his voice and has little sense of phrasing
or colour let alone characterisation. The Carlo of Marco Di Felice is a little better, but in trying to fill his voice
out with fuller tone it becomes monochromic. Elsewhere the
young bass Paolo Battaglia as Padre Guardiano is made up
to look older and ends up more like a Martian refugee from Star
Wars. There are moments when I think his voice has promise
with sap and bass resonance; at others his tone is dry. He
is unable to convey the gravitas appropriate to the role
either via his voice or by his advantageous physical stature.
As Fra Melitone, Paolo Rumetz makes his presence felt and
acts the part of the irascible brother quite well but his
interpretation is limited by unsteadiness at the top of the
voice. Tiziana Carraro’s Preziosilla has no such trouble
but fails to bring much to the role. Again I fear poor directorial
input leaves him stranded and hardly portraying the vivandier.
It was not long ago I was able to enthuse about Dynamic’s
recording of I Vespri Siciliani, the
Italian version of, Verdi’s
grand opera written for production at the Paris Opéra in
1855. Performed at the tiny Teatro Verdi, Busseto, and directed
by the experienced Pier Luigi Pizzi, it is commendable in
many ways where this performance so notably fails. First
in the quality of voices, second in the director’s use of
space whilst using minimal stage props and, most importantly,
his direction of the singers (see review).
The moving sets in this production, whist giving the possibility
of quick scene changes, only provide an appropriate and evocative mise-en-scène at
the start of act one and in the later scenes in the monastery.
As in the battle scene of act three noted above, the final
scene (Act 4 Chs. 4-5) fails to give Leonora’s habitation
much atmosphere whilst the management of her stabbing by
Carlo is lost off-stage. The chorus sing with some vivacity
but the conductor struggles at times to keep pit and stage
together. Only at the end do the audience show much enthusiasm
for the performance. Elsewhere their tepid applause has the
virtue of not intruding into the unfolding story.
Robert
J Farr