Composer: Giuseppe Verdi
Conductor: Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Director: Mariusz Treliński
The New York Met’s new production of Verdi’s La Forza del destino, their first in almost 30 years, is a triumph. It’s an intense story of love and vengeance with memorably rich music including the haunting theme tune familiar from Jean de Florette. This live stream from the Met intensifies the experience, allowing both intimate close-ups and great sweeping panoramas of designer Boris Kudlicka’s evocative settings.
Indeed in an interview, director Mariusz Trelinski emphasises his vision of this production as essentially filmic, its design creating strong visual imagery to convey the work’s powerful drama. Behind it all is Fate itself, suggested by an ever-moving revolve. Extraordinary digital projections create scenes of war in its many incarnations, from soldiers bivouacking in an icy forest to sinister helicopters hovering in a blood-red sky.
The overture, vividly conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and beginning with those ominous blasts from brass and bassoons, is cleverly used to dramatize the situation with which the opera opens. As the characters move wordlessly on stage, we are shown the whole set-up and grasp the underlying tensions between the protagonists. It’s the birthday party of Donna Leonora (a magnificent Lise Davidsen) hosted by her father, the Marquis of Calatrava (impressively sung by Soloman Howard).
As Act I begins, the revolve reveals the different interiors and exteriors of an elegant Art Deco hotel. Leonora clearly feels herself trapped. She is always moving, sweeping from room to room to find solitude as she anxiously awaits her secret lover, Don Alvaro (Brian Jagde). The Marquis, staggering drunkenly, berates her for encouraging the impoverished Alvaro. Leonora is fatally conflicted between dutiful love for her father and her feelings for Alvaro. When the two men meet, an accident occurs from which the whole tragedy springs. The Marquis is fatally wounded, laying a curse on his daughter before dying. Leonora’s brother, Don Carlo (Igor Golovatenko) vows to kill both Leonora and Alvaro and the couple are parted.
Soprano Davidsen is a matchless Donna Leonora. She looks every inch the part and is both a superb singer and an expressive actor. The tortured love scene in Act I between her and Don Alvaro is sumptuous, her rich soprano blending perfectly with Jagde’s warmly lyrical tenor. Alvaro, with his long hair and studenty jacket, is very much the distressed romantic lover. Baritone Golovatenko is a powerful, passionate Don Carlo.
But we will not hear the lovers in duet again until the end of the opera. As time passes we learn the Marquis’s death has sparked a devastating war, again evocatively presented through music and visuals. At some stage, we hear the stirring chorus Rataplan, rataplan, della gloria as young men enlist for war. But by a cruel turn of Fate’s wheel, sworn enemies, Don Alvaro and Don Carlo, are brought together. But each having enlisted under a false name, neither recognises the other. Alvaro rescues Carlo from a brawl and an intense bond of friendship develops between them. The duets sung by Jagde and Golovantenko are deeply moving, their discovery that they are enemies heart-breaking.
Before Leonora and Don Alvaro are all-too-briefly reunited, there several magnificent scenes. The monastery where Leonora sings her poignant aria, Madre, pietosa Vergine, is austerely beautiful, the religious choruses suggestive of Verdi’s later Requiem. Later on, we are in the thrillingly designed post-apocalyptic setting where starving crowds beg from chilly Fra Melitone (a comically disdainful Patrick Carfizzi). Davidsen is particularly compelling in the final scenes in which, as the broken Leonora, she calls for divine pardon.
The grim setting – a grimy subway station – seems fitting for a world in which all meaning has been lost. But watching this production of La Forza del destino is a moving, thrilling and ultimately cathartic experience.
Reviewed on 9 March and plays again in various cinemas until 15 March 2024
