Urmana, Guelfi, Giordani, Mehta - Verdi: La Forza Del Destino (2009)

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Urmana, Guelfi, Giordani, Mehta - Verdi: La Forza Del Destino (2009)

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In his 2007 production for the Maggio Musicale in Florence, French opera director Nicolas Joël – named as the next director of the Opéra de Paris from 2009 – presented his reading of Giuseppe Verdi’s La forza del destino (The Force of Destiny). An adventure story and a tale of grim pursuit and unrelenting misfortune, of faith, renunciation and - fi nally - death and forgiveness, Verdi’s La forza del destino is, like an operatic road movie, also a portrait gallery of the different places and curious people the main players meet along their way. As an opera dominated by big solo set pieces and long, complex duets, La forza del destino places special demands on everyone involved in bringing it to the stage: from the director, who is called upon to convey the dramatic development in those musical conversations and their place within a quite diffuse sequence of events, to the individual singers, each of whom is pushed to an extreme by Verdi’s vocal writing. The singers all belong to the international opera scene and provide not only excellent vocal quality but also strong acting skills, which help tell the gripping story with its many disguises, various places and surprising discoveries: Lithuanian soprano Violeta Urmana fi rst took on the challenge of the part of Leonora at Covent Garden in 2004, not long after her graduation from mezzo-soprano - she made her début in the opera as Preziosilla - to the soprano she had always felt herself to be. Writing in the British magazine Opera, Matteo Sansone described her as an “excellent Leonora” and singled out for special praise her last-act aria, “delivered with intense emotion … in strong and luminous timbre”. Tenor Marcello Giordani is seen here making his début as Alvaro, an ostensibly dramatic role that nevertheless requires a sustained lyrical quality for one of Verdi’s most heartfelt tenor arias, “Oh, tu che in seno agli angeli”, with its atmospheric prelude for solo clarinet. Alvaro’s antagonist, Don Carlo, is sung by Carlo Guelfi , a specialist in the great Verdi baritone roles, from Nabucco to Iago, while bass Roberto Scandiuzzi plays the central, pacifying fi gure of the Padre Guardiano, conjuring up, again in the words of Sansone, “a feeling of religious fervour and genuine compassion in his duet with the anguished Leonora”. A counter part to the certainties of his faith is provided by Russian mezzo-soprano Julia Gertseva as a “spirited Preziosilla” and the all-too-human Brother Melitone of seasoned buffo bass Bruno De Simone.

Nicolas Joël’s production gives the work an unobtrusive update of about a hundred years from its composition, the period leading up to Italian Unifi cation, suggesting that the Germans, upon whom Preziosilla calls for death, are not those involved in the War of the Austrian Succession, as imagined by Rivas and Verdi, but the country’s foreign occupiers, while Ezio Frigerio’s sets provide some dark Spanish visual contexts. And far from the music’s tub-thumping reputation, under the baton of Zubin Mehta, artistic director of the renowned Maggio Musicale festival, was a “thoughtful reading of the instrumental subtleties” that the Opera critic noted.

With this recording TDK continues its series of opera recordings from important Italian opera houses and festivals; it incorporates an important and frequently performed Verdi opera into its catalogue.

Composer: Giuseppe Verdi
Performer: Alessandro Luongo, Filippo Polinelli, Duccio Dal Monte, Antonella Trevisan, …
Conductor: Zubin Mehta
Orchestra/Ensemble: Florence Maggio Musicale Orchestra, Florence Maggio Musicale Chorus

Reviews: This is a tremendously enjoyable production of an opera that can be difficult to bring off. La forza del destino is so epic that it runs the risk of sprawling, and if the performers and the stage director don’t exercise self-discipline, the opera quickly loses its focus. I don’t think anyone will argue that this is the best-sung performance that he or she ever heard—in spite of its difficulties, there are many good audio-only recordings of this opera—but this is one of those times when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The last time I reviewed a DVD of this opera in these pages, it was a version dating from 1983 from the Metropolitan Opera, with Leontyne Price, Giuseppe Giacomini, and Leo Nucci in the lead roles. One might assume that the Met’s production would easily surpass the competition, but this newer version wins hands down, not because the singing is better (although that is arguably the case) but because the drama seems to mean something to everyone involved. The Met’s version is static, and, to be honest, frequently dull.


Stage director Nicolas Joël has no strange ideas about this opera, other than moving it up in time to what appears to be the 1800s. He handles the important crowd scenes very effectively, and encourages the singers to interact with each other in a dramatically realistic manner. Ezio Frigerio’s sets are simple but evocative, and Jürgen Hoffmann’s lighting is appropriately gloomy. Video director Andrea Bevilacqua has captured the opera’s mood perfectly, and whoever edited the production for video had an ear for the music as well: for once, the editing works with the music, not against it. The 16:9 picture format is crisp, like a cool and moonlit night, and the sound—I heard this DVD in the LPCM stereo format—is impressive in its impact and clarity. I just wish that we had been left to enjoy the overture without having to view the orchestra through a fake proscenium arch, and without opening credits competing for one’s attention. This music is too good to be wasted on “reading the program,” as it were.


It’s probably a stupid thing to applaud a television screen. Nevertheless, that is what I found myself doing as Violeta Urmana finished singing “Pace, pace, mio Dio.” Maybe it’s because she is not a petite woman, but I found myself thinking of Zinka Milanov and Eileen Farrell throughout much of her performance. Although it is not used with great subtlety, her voice is blessedly secure, and there is a nobility to Urmana’s singing which is right for Verdi. Her death scene had me in tears, which is more than I can say for Price and Caballé in the same scene. Tenor Marcello Giordani has a brilliant, almost metallic voice, and he uses it excitingly and with emotion; “O tu che in seno agli angeli” is truly moving. His problem is a tendency to go sharp. Here, his sound at the very top of his voice is more attractive than it was in his aria disc on Naxos, which made the top sound dry and strained. As for his acting, he is successful in depicting Don Alvaro’s nearly constant state of mental anguish. As Don Carlo, Carlo Guelfi has a dry sound—definitely more Leonard Warren than Robert Merrill—but like both of those singers, he is not lazy, and what he lacks in tonal allure (and sometime finesse) he makes up for in spirit. In his later interactions with Don Alvaro, this Carlo’s sinister, cynical smile is chilling, and by intention or by necessity, that uncomfortable smile is matched by his voice. Roberto Scandiuzzi is a surprisingly worn-sounding Padre Guardiano, although he’s one of the more attractive-looking monks one might hope to see in this opera. He’s quite overshadowed by Bruno de Simone’s fantastic Melitone in a performance that is both richly comic and malicious, and also terrifically sung. That leaves us with Julia Gertseva’s sexy Preziosilla. Vocally, she lacks the requisite agility for the role, but the sound is appropriately alluring, and you have to admire her exuberance in the “Rataplan” chorus at the end of act III.


In this performance, Mehta reminds us what a fine conductor he was on so many opera recordings in the 1970s. Nothing is self-indulgent or rushed, and the score’s excitement, melancholy, and (above all) melody are given their due. At times, the orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino sounds a little undersized, but the payoff is the transparency and bite of its playing.


With its imperfect but completely likable cast, wonderful conducting, sensible and imaginative direction, and high production values, this DVD of La forza del destino is well worth considering as a first choice.

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Urmana, Guelfi, Giordani, Mehta - Verdi: La Forza Del Destino (2009)

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