LA FORZA DEL DESTINO – REVIEW OF 2024 LIVE FROM THE MET PRODUCTION

“Holy Smoke” is probably the most trite, colloquial reaction used to express amazement, surprise or astonishment. In the case of La Forza Del Destino, streamed live from the Met it is also apt. As to Holy, La Forza is heavy duty on religion where the protagonists seek cover in religious institutions, seek solace and remission of sins and the presence of a Supreme being is ever acknowledged. As to Smoke there are scenes of destruction, billowing flames and smoke as if we are in a Ukrainian city under Russian attack . This is  La Forza Del Destino that will knock your socks off, to put in another trite expression.
I will pay tribute to the singers first and then describe the brilliantly original interpretation and staging by director Mariusz Trelinski and Set Designer Boris Kudlicka.
La Forza is a passionate love and an astonishingly powerful hate story. Leonora loves Alvaro and he loves her more than words can describe. They are about to elope from her father’s house and are interrupted by him. Alvaro drops his gun which accidentally fires and kills the father. Her brother Carlo swears to take revenge on Alvaro and more than three hours later something happens.
We  need a superlative soprano and two outstanding singers, a tenor and a baritone. The Met has them. Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen has the prowess of a Wagnerian singer and the suppleness and beauty of a coloratura. Her Leonora, who goes through several guises, is unfailingly dramatic, moving, passionate and simply superb. We need a heroic tenor and a passionate baritone and Brian Jagde and Igor Golovatenko to vie for top billing but there is no reason to choose. They sing solos and duets as friends and enemies with effectiveness and sonority to satisfy the highest demands. Jagde has the better claim to our approval in contrast to Carlo’s implacable hatred who is prepared to kill someone, Alvaro, who saved his life.
There are other singers in secondary roles and I will pay tribute to them later.
La Forza opens in the house of the Marquis of Calatrava, maybe in eighteenth century Spain. Director Mariusz Trenlinski sets the opera today and the Marquis’ house is changed to a swanky hotel. The Marquis looks every inch like a dictator of a modern banana republic. The party is attended by a cohort of smartly dressed military officers and they are celebrating Leonora’s birthday. She storms out of the party puffing a cigarette. She is led back in but she escapes and goes to a waiting room where she is joined by Alvaro who enters through a window. They want to elope.  
Leonora’s father is accidentally killed, and he curses her, but the couple escapes and are then separated. Leonora travels in a car through a storm. The car is overturned and she is left in the middle of nowhere. Here and throughout the opera there are projected videos showing foul weather, the accident, billowing flames and smoke and a devasting landscape.  This Forza could pass for a war film using most of the props and special effects of this Met production.
Leonora starts as a beautifully dressed, cigarette-smoking and imperious daughter of the Marquis, and then she becomes a hermit in a convent and almost a Madonna. While she is praying an image of the Madonna bearing a resemblance to Leonora appears above her. It is lowered on her and the image and the woman become one. Leonora becomes the Madonna. Later she is reduced to a bag lady pushing a supermarket cart.
Trelinski wants the anti-hero Carlo to be thought of as Hamlet and we see the Ghost of the Marquis hovering around and above Carlo very much like the Ghost in Shakespeare’s play.
Leonora’s father is sung by bass Soloman Howard. He has a commanding presence and is vocally outstanding. In addition to the Marquis and the Ghost, Howard appears as Guardiano, the father Superior of the Convent where Leonora notices that he looks like her father. Howard plays the good cleric in contrast to bass baritone Patrick Carfizzi’s notable performance as the nasty Brother Melitone. The other noteworthy performance is that of mezzo-soprano Judit Kutasi as Preziosilla, the fortune teller who predicts bad news with relish.  
The final scene is set in a heavily bombed and destroyed part of town. We notice signs for New York subway lines. Is the banana republic that we saw earlier in fact the United States?
Director Trelinski, Set Designer Boris Kudlicka, Costume Designer Moritz Junge, Lighting Designer Marc Heinz and Projection Designer Bartek Macias have imagined a Forza that is brilliant, fabulous and out of this world. At four hours and fifteen minutes it is very long and it can afford to have some scenes cut without affecting its impact. But even with its length, Trelinski and company have made of it an unexpected and extraordinary afternoon at the opera.
Holy Smoke!
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La Forza Del Destino by Giuseppe Verdi was transmitted Live in HD from the Metropolitan Opera in New York on March 9, 2024, at the Cineplex VIP Don Mills Shops 12 Marie Labatte Road, Toronto Ontario M3C 0H9 and other theatres. It will be shown again on April 6, 2024, at select theatres. For more information: www.cineplex.com/events

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