Jolly good stab at fixing Verdi’s unwieldy opera
La forza del destino Welsh National Opera, Wales Millennium Centre
By common consent, La forza is the most unwieldy of Verdi’s mature operas, a writhing torso that never settles into shape. The composer struggled with revisions throughout the 1860s and never got it right – parts of the third and fourth acts show a distinct slump in both his musical inspiration and theatrical nous that no conductor or director could ever redeem.
But Carlo Rizzi and David Pountney have certainly had a jolly good stab at the problem, and this new production for Welsh National Opera is just about as successful as one could reasonably hope.
Rizzi has Verdi in his blood, and from his cracking account of the celebrated overture to its final seraphic cadences, he conducts a fast-paced and vividly coloured account of the score, played with exceptional clarity by WNO’S wonderful orchestra. Pountney can be a brash and slapdash director, but he is relatively restrained here, his most flamboyant idea being to turn the camp follower Preziosilla into a harbinger of fate – half cabaret magician, half grim reaper – who prowls balefully throughout, prescient of what is past and to come. Otherwise the staging (designed by Raimund Bauer) is austere, focused on a large white panel that oozes the blood of vendetta and marked by allusions to the black and white fascism of the Spanish Civil War. It’s a pity that more isn’t made of Alvaro’s Inca ancestry – surely his outsider status is a key to the drama.
Outstanding in a well-curated cast is Gwyn Hughes Jones. Not the most thrilling actor, he nevertheless gives Alvaro life through a flow of warm and confident singing, clarion in tone and projection, that falters only slightly at the cruelly difficult climax to his Act 3 aria. As his nemesis Carlo, Luis Cansino also compensates for a prosaic stage presence with shapely and musical delivery. Their gravely beautiful duet Solenne in quest’ora is a highlight of the evening.
Miklós Sebestyén is a properly sonorous Padre Guardiano, Justina Gringyté kicks up a storm in all Preziosilla’s guises, and dear old Donald Maxwell has fun as the fusspot Melitone. The chorus is stunning. But I have reservations about Mary Elizabeth Williams’s Leonora. She is a most sympathetic performer and her soft singing in her three arias is truly lovely. But it’s one of those voices that doesn’t respond well to pressure, and above mezzo forte, a sharp metallic edge takes over, giving an impression of hysteria rather than passion. Until Feb 17, then touring to Birmingham, Southampton, Plymouth, Milton Keynes, Bristol and Llandudno. Tickets: 029 2063 6464; wno.org.uk