La Forza del Destino (Opera In Four Acts)
Composed by: Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
Libretto by: Francesco Maria Piave
Premiered: Imperial Theatre, St. Petersburg, 1862 (original version); Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 1869 (revised version)
Setting: Spain and Italy around the time of the War of the Austrian Succession (mid-18th Century)
Cast/Characters:
Leonora (Soprano)
Il Marchese Di Calatrave (Bass)
Don Alvaro (Tenor)
Don Carlo di Vargas (Baritone)
Preziosilla (Mezzo-Soprano)
Padre Guardiano (Bass)
Fra Melitone (Baritone)
Curra (Mezzo-Soprano)
Un Alcade (Baritone)
Mastro Trabuco (Tenor)
A Surgeon (Baritone)
Synopsys: https://www.metopera.org/discover/synopses/la-forza-del-destino
An inside look: https://www.metopera.org/discover/articles/destinys-children/
The music in this opera is so good and so powerful, I wish all the world could experience the healing punch in the gut that can come from allowing the difficult emotions we tend to ignore or bury to be moved for even a small moment by this music. Maybe the music can’t heal everything we need, but I hold hope it is enough to remind us of the great potential of our humanity even when it feels like so much of the beauty of life can get lost in the suffering and loss we feel in our lives.
I am trying something different in this post and focusing on one of the arias in this opera. From what I read, Verdi was not a religious man, but in Act 2 of this opera he essentially wrote a few songs that call to the great Mother & Father. The music holds a deeply raw spirituality in them - a primal cry with an indescribable feeling of knowing we are held even in our deepest suffering and sorrow. Below is a link to one of them that both grounds us to our suffering life and lifts us above it too, La Vergine degli Angeli, sung by Maria Callas and the Chorus Teatro alla Scala, Milan. (A couple other powerful, deeply moving arias from Act 2 are Padre Eterno Signor and Madre, pietosa Vergine).
La Vergine degli Angeli
vi copra del suo manto,
e voi protegga vigile
di Dio l’Angelo santo.
In my listening adventures for this project, I found myself at the Kabuki Theater in San Francisco at one of the screenings of this opera that was streamed live on March 9, 2024 from The Met Opera in NY. Despite all my reservations about going to a 4.5 hour show, I was blown away.
One of the suprising highlights of the experience was to see backstage views between acts/scenes and videos shared on screen during the intermissions (there were 2 intermissions for this nearly 4 hour performance!). My favorite behind the scenes clip was with the Met Chorus Master Donald Palumbo. He said that La Forza del Destino used to be performed at the Met every other year or so (this year’s return of the opera is the first in almost 30 years). In about 2:00 minutes into the video below he describes La Vergine degli Angeli as “…one of the most beautiful moments in all of opera” and goes on to say “…to have a soprano like Lise Davidsen sailing over us is just one of the greatest thrills I’ve had here at the Met”.
I was knocked out by this moment in the opera and in The Met’s production of it with the stunning Lise Davidsen. It is a moment I will never forget and one where I felt I truly met Verdi and saw his immense humanity in this music he left us.
It is also a moment I was introduced to the mastery that is happening at The Met by artists and teachers that allow this music to continue to move us today. It makes me wonder what other gems are out there to discover when we are open to explore the unfamiliar.
I’m also slowly realizing that it is impossible to summarize opera because it has so much depth to it. It makes writing about it hard but I’ll continue to share my experiences as I move through all the operas in this listening project.