[Met Performance] CID:275770



La Forza del Destino
Metropolitan Opera House, Thu, March 15, 1984




La Forza del Destino (208)
Giuseppe Verdi | Francesco Maria Piave
Leonora
Leontyne Price

Don Alvaro
Giuseppe Giacomini

Don Carlo
Leo Nucci

Padre Guardiano
Bonaldo Giaiotti

Preziosilla
Isola Jones

Fra Melitone
Enrico Fissore

Marquis de Calatrava
Richard Vernon

Curra
Diane Kesling

Mayor
James Courtney

Trabuco
Anthony Laciura

Surgeon
John Darrenkamp


Conductor
James Levine







Review 1:

Bernard Holland in The New York Times
Met Opera: Cast Changes in Verdi?s ?Forza?

Cast changes at the Metropolitan Opera often carry with them a certain dilution of quality. Not so Thursday night for "La Forza del Destino." Leontyne Price returned as Leonora, one of her famous Verdi roles, and here she was surrounded by two strong male leads, Giuseppe Giacomini as Don Alvaro and Leo Nucci as Don Carlo.

The men shared a flat-out intensity, though Mr. Nucci's baritone was perhaps the more smoothly musical of the two. Mr. Giacomini has a lean but potent tenor sound; and though his singing was somewhat coarsened by a tendency to scoop at notes and create disruptive accents at inappropriate moments of a phrase, his high energy level in "Oh tu che in seno agli angeli? appealed hugely to his audience. Mr. Nucci's voice is not inherently a big one, but it is seamlessly produced and powerfully used. "Urna fatale" went very well. The other new voice in the Met's "Forza" was the competent bass of Bonaldo Giaiotti as Padro Guardiano.

But this was truly Miss Price's evening. There were some jolting shifts of register, and Miss Price must protect her fragile upper notes with tender care; but her dramatic presence on stage and the overall impact of her singing went far beyond matters of technique. "Padre, pietosa Vergine" had a stunning muted eloquence, and "Pace, pace, mio Dio" at the end had a sonorous beauty and power of communication that this listener ? and I think- everyone else in attendance ? will think back upon for many years to come.



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