Verdi's La Forza del Destino.(Opera review)

Verdi's La Forza del Destino Metropolitan Opera, New York

Verdi's La Forza del Destino (1862; revised 1869) is a curiosity, among his works, in that it relies heavily on great singing to overcome a convoluted story that is, frankly, ridiculous to today's audiences. (Father killed by revolver being dropped on floor; son wreaks implacable revenge on his sister and her beloved.) The opera survives for two main reasons: The music Verdi poured into its disparate scenes is profligate, even by his generous standards; and that music, always and ever, is realized by emanating from deep within each character. It is Verdi's music, not the story, that animates the characters and gives them the lives they possess onstage, and unless that spirit of being--both for good and evil--surges from every character in the drama, the opera will lie inert in its sprawl. Verdi believed every moment: His voices should persuade you.

The Metropolitan Opera has had a notable, if checkered, history with this work, and even to those who began seeing it there in the late 1950s, it is an opera replete with ghosts of past performances--after all, Leonard Warren died onstage. Its current revival, which I saw February 28, in the ramshackle I996 production of Michael Scott, included all that Verdi wrote (as some of the earlier productions did not), but slopped over the edges with much stage business and far too much flag-waving (and a blowsy, pitch-challenged camp-follower Preziosilla from Ildiko Komlosi). The conductor Gianandrea Noseda, on the other hand, maintained control from the pit with a rather tight-lipped, get-on-with-it attitude.

The cast, while largely up to the extended task Verdi set for them in this opera, was rarely inspired, so that we who continue to be haunted by ghosts were left unsatisfied. Deborah Voigt, as Leonora, is one of the Met's reigning stars, and she always gives an honest, forthright ...