Tag

La Forza Del Destino

Invano Alvaro

November 1, 2025

‘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 […]

La Forza Del Destino in HD

March 9, 2024

Verdi’s La Forza Del Destino returned to the Met this season after an absence of 18 years. It was staged in a new production supervised by the Polish director Mariusz Trelinski. He moved both the time and places from the middle of the 18th century in Spain and Italy to sometime in the second half […]

Met’s New Forza a Dud

February 27, 2024

Last night the Met Opera presented its new production of Verdi’s La Forza Del Destino. Broadcast on its Sirius XM channel it will be telecast in HD on March 9. Staged as a vehicle for star soprano Lise Davidsen, the performance reached no higher than that encountered at a good provincial German or Italian theater. […]

Finale 24 – La Forza Del Destino

July 31, 2020

Verdi started to threaten to retire before he was 50. After composing Un Ballo in Maschera he said he was done and that the life of a gentleman farmer was to be his for the remainder of his life. In 1861 he was approached by the great tenor Enrico Tamberlick, acting as an agent for […]

Tutto Verdi: La Forza del Destino

November 12, 2016

Parma’s production of Verdi’s epic opera is one of the weakest in its march through all the master’s operas. Forza is often criticized as the weakest of Verdi’s latter masterpieces because of its episodic nature, its length (when given uncut), and because of its “dry” patches. In my opinion, none of these criticisms apply when […]

La Forza Del Destino in Munich

December 29, 2013

Yesterday the Bavarian State Opera streamed a live performance of Verdi’s La Forza Del Destino. The cast was headed by Jonas Kaufmann’s impersonation of Don Alvaro, one of the most challenging tenor roles in the standard operatic repertory. The quality of the streaming was excellent. I watched the show on a 69″ HD TV and […]

La vita è inferno all’infelice…O tu che seno agli angeli

May 8, 2010

Verdi’s apotheosis to misery and self pity is one of opera’s greatest arias. The recitative which starts the scena is better than most composers’ best arias. The aria itself is sublime. It requires an extraordinary tenor to bring it off. For no reason other than I like it so much here are three performances of […]

La vita è inferno all’infelice…O tu che seno agli angeli