LA FORZA DEL DESTINO

(original version for St Petersburg)

Opera in Four Acts by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)

First performed at the Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre,
St Petersburg, 22 November 1862

Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave

Set in Spain and Italy around 1750

In 1861 the Imperial Theatre in St Petersburg commissioned Verdi to compose an opera; the Russians suggested Victor Hugo’s Ruy Blas as a subject, but this fell foul of the censors, and instead Verdi proposed a Spanish drama, La forza del destino. Verdi made the arduous journey from Italy to supervise the production, but the soprano fell ill and the performances were postponed for a year, so Verdi put the finishing touches to his score back home in Busseto.

Francesco Maria Piave’s libretto is based on Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino (1835), by Ángel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas. The sprawling plot unfolds across several locations and many years; the lives of the characters are dogged by a series of unlikely accidents, encounters and coincidences as Fate pursues them to their tragic demise. La forza del destino is unique among Verdi’s operas in its huge range of characters, settings and moods; besides a colourful trio of ill-fated protagonists – the South American Indian Don Alvaro, his beloved Leonora di Vargas and her vengeful brother Don Carlo – we also meet an extrovert gypsy, Preziosilla (who leads the chorus in a rabble-rousing hit number, ‘Rataplan’), and a couple of comic characters, the pedlar Trabuco and the grumbling monk Fra Melitone.

For a revival of the opera at la Scala, Milan, in 1869, Verdi enlisted the aid of Antonio Ghislanzoni (later the librettist of Aïda) to create the revised version of the opera which is familiar to audiences today. The biggest surprise on hearing the original version is the Overture: instead of the extended symphonic work familiar to us from the concert hall, we hear only a brief Prelude, launching us headlong into the action. Verdi and Ghislanzoni rewrote the last scene of Act III, removing a tenor aria which muses on the opera’s central theme – the ‘force of Destiny’. They also changed the ending, allowing Don Alvaro to stay alive and repent his fate; in the original version, he leaps despairingly into an abyss, so that the drama ends bleakly with the fateful death of all three principal characters.

Making his debut with Chelsea Opera Group, Robin Newton conducts an exciting cast, which includes Gweneth-Ann Jeffers as Leonora, Peter Auty as Alvaro and Donald Maxwell as Melitone.  We are also pleased to welcome the Imperial Male Voice Choir who have kindly agreed to join us for the substantial men-only choruses that the work requires.

Don’t miss this fascinating opportunity to hear one of the grandest of Verdi’s operas in its rarely heard original version.

© Jonathan Burton 2011