[Met Performance] CID:323510



La Forza del Destino
Metropolitan Opera House, Mon, March 4, 1996




La Forza del Destino (212)
Giuseppe Verdi | Francesco Maria Piave
Leonora
Sharon Sweet

Don Alvaro
Pl?cido Domingo

Don Carlo
Vladimir Chernov

Padre Guardiano
Roberto Scandiuzzi

Preziosilla
Gloria Scalchi

Fra Melitone
Bruno Pola

Marquis de Calatrava
Hao Jiang Tian

Curra
Jane Shaulis

Mayor
James Courtney

Trabuco
Michel S?n?chal

Surgeon
Christopher Schaldenbrand


Conductor
James Levine







Review 1:

Leighton Kerner in the Village Voice

Less fortunate than Miller's up-dating of ?Der Rosenkavalier" was Giancarlo del Monaco's 100-year hop for his new Met production of Verdi's "La forza del destino," whose action should be contemporaneous with the Strauss opera's, Since "La forza" deals in part with the War of the Austrian Succession. (Novelizing Anthony Burgess killed off Octavian in that war.) By putting Verdi's opera into the mid-19th century, Del Monaco turned it into a Risorgimento piece, like Verdi's earlier blood-and-thunderers that paralleled Italy's struggles for unity. The struggles were over by the time "La forza" was first composed (1862), and Verdi's opera is concerned not with patriotism, but with mad personal obsessions with religion, guilt, and vengeance. Del Monaco confused and deflected the issue.


Things were musically right, however, for most of the March 4 performance. James Levine had the. Orchestra playing the violence hotly and the piety radiantly. The chorus went from strength to strength; I had never heard the "Rataplan" ensemble done so stirringly. As Alvaro, destiny's heroic plaything, Placido Domingo ? after an underpowered first act ? delivered tenorial bronze and headlong tragedy. As his pursuer Carlo, Vladimir Chernov acted to the well-detailed hilt, but his finely polished baritone is two sizes too small for this music. Sharon Sweet's Leonora sang big but too often out of focus and flat, and acted with relentless vacuity.



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