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The Force of Destiny was a Verdi opera unknown to me.

I began my usual pre-performance routine. I read about Verdi’s life as he began writing the Force of Destiny . I read the play upon which the libretto is based. I then read the libretto and listened to a few audio recordings.

I would normally view one or two filmed versions of the opera under question, but I found none with which I could get past the first act. Miscasting, tawdry sets and costumes, poor stage direction, ill-conceived ideas made continuing impossible.

I approached performance day under-equipped, I fear.

After Simon Boccanegra Verdi said he was giving up composing to take up farming. He settled on his country estate. No one knows why this happened. After three years of this country life he got a letter inviting him to compose an opera for the Imperial Theatre in St.Petersburg..

He suggested Victor Hugo’s Ruy Blas but the story of a valet becoming a royal was rejected by the Imperial censors. So he picked up a wild romance by a Spanish nobleman (probably the lyricist Piave’s idea) and pair set to work on Forza.

Verdi, and Francesco Maria Piave, had adapted Victor Hugo’s Hernani (1830) to the operatic stage in 1844. As attractive as Hugo’s breaking of the neo-classical conventions, Verdi found the play, Don Alvaro, or The  Force of Fate by Angel de Saavedra, the Duke of Rivas (1835) promising for the same reasons. De Saavedra violated all accepted neoclassical norms of unity and symmetry and created an action occurring over a time span of years. Piave again  handled the libretto, with Antonio Ghislanzoni providing the rewritten final libretto.

The plot was one of blood-thirsty vengeance

When Leonora de Vargas (Lise Davidsen), daughter of the Marquis of Calatrava (Soloman Howard) decides to elope with the handsome Don Alvaro (Brian Jagde), an ‘indiano” of whose origins nothing is known, she is aware that in theory at least her father is bound to cast her off. In de Saavedra’s play she relies on illogical good will and common sense to come to her aid. As her maid Curra puts it in the original play, her father will first run complaining to the mayor about the stain on his family’s image; he will have search parties out for them throughout the length and breadth of Spain; but he will soon calm down. And by the time Leonora has presented him with a grandchild he will be only too glad to welcome the fugitive home. As for Leonora’s brother, Carlo (Igor Golovatenko), he will soon be boasting about their rich brother-in-law who gives them expensive presents and pays off their debts.

But that is not how it happens in Verdi’s opera.

The lovers are caught in the act of eloping by the Marquis, to whom the apparent sexual liaison represents dishonor not only to the Vargas name, but to the Order of Calatrava.

“The marquis and his son insist on living by a rigid, even barbarous interpretation of the honor code, an interpretation best exemplified in the plays of Calderon de la Barca, which were written fully two centuries before the period in which Don Alvaro takes place. According to this interpretation of the honor code, a “stain” of this sort can only be removed with blood: both Alvaro and Lenora must die at the hands of those they have wronged – in this case, Lenora’s father and her brother”[i]

When Alvaro throws away his pistol, the weapon accidentally fires, and the situation grows more dire. The gun wounds Leonora’s father fatally: and he dies with these last words to his daughter: “A curse on you”.

A curse is possible only at times, and in places, and by people where divine powers are acknowledged to hear and influence his behavior.

“Fate shares the mysterious manifestation of the Marquis’ curse — both powers drive the drama. A curse invokes divine power to exact retribution through harm or misfortune. A curse — also referred to as a jinx, hex or execration — represents any expressed wish that adversity or misfortune shall befall or attach to another, one or more persons, a place, or an object. In particular, a curse may refer to a wish that harm or hurt will be inflicted by supernatural powers, such as a spell, a prayer, an imprecation, an execration, magic, witchcraft, God, a natural force, or a spirit. In many belief systems, the curse itself (or accompanying ritual) is considered to have a causative force in the result. To reverse or eliminate a curse it must be removed or broken, a process often believed to require equally elaborate rituals or prayers. In Verdi’s La Forza, the Marquis’ curse of his daughter Leonora becomes monomaniacal, an all-consuming obsession that drives powerful vindictive forces to invoke divine retribution and exact harm or misfortune.” [ii]

Leonora and Alvaro flee, but become separated. Nevertheless Fate  hounds them, figuratively,  to the ends of the earth in the form of the avenging brother, Carlos. Not even in the arms of the church can Alvaro avoid his destiny, which is to cause the death of the entire Calatrava family, including Leonora.”[iii] The play ends after the death of Leonora, with Alvaro’s suicide, and Verdi’s original opera ended  in the same bloody way..

Leonora, hiding in a cave, finds Alvaro asking for help for a dying man, her brother Carlo, whom Alvaro has wounded when attacked. Leonora rushes to her dying brother who, still seeking blood to restore family honor, stabs her fatally. As she dies. Alvaro receives from Leonora’s God’s pardon. Alvaro and Leonora believe they will meet again in heaven.

It was ready by the end of 1861. Verdi and his wife made the long trip to St Petersburg, only to be told that the company’s Leonora was ill and the show would be put off until the next season.

Nine months later, Forza was launched at last. Some accounts say ‘a moderate success’ but the music scribe of the St Petersburg main paper reported ‘…wild cheering … prolonged applause … to comply with insistent demands the celebrated composer was dragged on stage on several occasions …’.

Regardless of public opinion, Verdi didn’t like it much. The structure bothered him he thought the original ending was too much It was in fact even more bizarre than the current version: after Leonora’s death Alvaro confessed he was a messenger from hell and yelled out frightful things like “Let mankind perish! Annihilation for all!” and then jumped over a precipice.

So Verdi reworked the old opera with a new librettist, Ghislanzani (Piave had been sidelined by a stroke), made a number of major changes to the score and the new Forza was premiered at La Scala, Milan, in February 1869. His revision ends more gently, with the spirit of Christian resignation This time everyone agreed it was a big success. Forza was revived quite a lot in the next thirty years when the Gothic taste was still quite acceptable, but the twentieth century saw its popularity fall away. Today it still pops up surprisingly often.

I was at a loss as to what to say about the current Metropolitan Opera production.

It is an incoherent and self-contradictory mess. A ridiculous attempt to make the play an analogy for hotel magnate and politician Donald Trump, with Leonora as Ivanka, and Carlo as Donald Junior.

I couldn’t bear wasting countless hours and untold amounts of energy outlining the numerous ways the production went awry.

Then, a God-send.

I came across an intelligent appreciation of the opera and a wise cirtique of the production by review by David P. Goldman, Tablet Magazine’s classical music critic, the Spengler columnist for Asia Times Online, Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Studies, and the author of How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam Is Dying, Too) and the new book You Will Be Assimilated: China’s Plan to Sino-Form the World. Mr. Goldman displays the same perspicacity and wide-ranging knowledge about opera as he has in discussing foreign affairs of state.

I offer the essay to you with great appreciation:

“The Met’s New ‘Therapeutic’ Forza Is a Disaster: A modern re-imagining turns tragedy to farce

by David P. Goldman

CLINK ON THE TTLE TO READ IT.

This story originally appeared in Tablet magazine, at tabletmag.com, and is reprinted with permission.

[i] Angel de Saavedra, duke of Rivas. Don Alvaro, or the Force of Fate (Washington, DC: The Catholic Press  of America: 2005), p.xv.

[ii] Burton D. Fisher . Verdi’s LA FORZA del DESTINO Opera Study Guide with Libretto: THE FORCE OF DESTINY (Opera Classics Library)

[iii] Budden, Julian. Verdi (New York: Shirmer Books, 111985), p. 251.

[iv] https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/forza-is-a-disaster