Invano Alvaro

‘Invano Alvaro’ is the last of three tenor-bartitone duets that grace Verdi’s La Forza Del Destino. All three are excellent, but the final one is likely the best such duet ever written by the composer. It’s in the same class as ‘Quando al mio sen per te parlava’ from Act 3 of I Vespri Siciliani and ‘Si, pel ciel’ from Otello. What sets the Forza duet apart is that it moves the plot while being both beautiful and dramatic. Indeed, it is the plot. It starts at the end of the opera’s penultimate scene and runs into its final one.

The duet is found in several places on this site. But I’ve never devoted an entire post to it. Below are 11 interpretations of it sung by noted artists. Most of these selections have not appeared here before. The Italian text with an English translation is at the end of this article.

From a 1943 recording Giacomo Lauri-Volpi is joined by Gino Bechi. The tenor enjoyed a remarkably successful career that spanned 40 years. He appeared to great acclaim at all the world’s great houses. Yet I’ve never cared for his voice. I find it unattractive and somewhat shrill and forced. Given the success and acclaim he enjoyed my opinion must be an outlier. Baritone Gino Bechi had a very successful career based mainly in Italy. He had a big and virile voice which can be heard on numerous recordings.

In 1953, in New Orleans, Mario Del Monaco and Leonard Warren participated in a staged performance of Forza. This excerpt is from that show.

Two duets featuring Giueppe Di Stefano are from 1955 and 1960. The ’55 excerpt is from a La Scala performance. Di Stefano’s partner is Aldo Protti. I’ve recently written about him. Note how good he is in this duet. This period was at the tail end of Di Stefano’s peak. He’s in terrific form. Of course, Alvaro is a role he shouldn’t have sung, but his emotional commitment is so palpable that it’s easy to understand why he and his conductors and directors wanted him to stray from the roles best suited to his beautiful lyric voice. By 1960, he was well on the downward path; yet, in this performance in Vienna, he managed to pull himself together and deliver an outstanding performance. It was perhaps the last time he was at his best. First 1955, then 1960. The baritone in the second clip is Ettore Bastianini.

Net two featuring Luciano Pavarotti. He never sang the complete opera in performance. He felt it was a bad luck opera. Leonard Warren had died in the middle of a performance of it in March 1960. These two excerpts are from recitals. The first is with baritone Piero Cappuccilli. The second is with the very young Dmitri Hvorostovsky. It was made several years before the Russian singer made his first Met appearance.

The next duet is from a Met performance featuring Giuseppe Giacominini and Leo Nucci.

This selection is taken from the complete performance of the opera featuring Jonas Kaufmann and Ludovic Tezier.

Jose Carreras and Piero Cappuccilli recorded the duet in 1981 before Carreras was stricken with leukemia. He recovered and returned to singing, but his voice was never again at the standard it reached before his serious illness.

More recently, tenor Jonathan Tetelman and baritone Adam Unger recorded the duet. It’s with an organ accompaniment which sounds okay. Tetelman recently made his Met debut.

Finally, a recording that’s appeared here before. The now legendary version sung by Richard Tucker and Robert Merrill at the 1972 Gala in honor of Sir Rudolf Bing. It features Merrill’s cosmic finalmente.