A revenger’s tragedy: Loy’s La forza del destino returns to The Royal Opera

Is Verdi’s La forza del destino the perfect opera? It’s got it all – glorious arias, knockout chorus scenes, an outpouring of melodies, vivid orchestration, a compelling confrontation of noble hero and implacable villain, an action-packed story laced with hilarious comic relief. What’s not to like? Well, people do have trouble with the sprawl of the plot and the extended list of implausible coincidences that drive it – “il destino”, in this opera, could be translated as “a series of unfortunate events”. 

Christoph Loy’s production, returning to Covent Garden for the first revival since it opened in 2019, does an excellent job of tying together the many loose ends. The Vargas family home is marked during the overture as a place of abuse and obsession which has turned Carlo into a truly evil creature and Leonora into the epitome of timorous indecision. The arrival of Alvaro is literally a breath of fresh air as he leaps in through the open window. Seeing this production for the second time (comments on production details are in my 2019 review), I was struck by the intelligence with which the arc of the story was brought out by Loy’s use of his single set, keeping the overall shape constant but varying many features, ending with a particularly satisfying return to the shape of Leonora’s room in her family home. 

This revival was marked by the high acting quality of its whole cast; the events may be implausible but the characters are not. Many fine details of the text were brought out by the way they were acted. The racist hatred of James Creswell’s Marquis of Calatrava and Étienne Dupuis' Carlo was marked by the disgust in their faces and voices whenever they mentioned Alvaro’s foreign blood. When Carlo mentioned the Calatrava name to Alvaro, Brian Jagde recoiled as if a snake had bit him. 

Jagde was a proper swashbuckling hero, with generous phrasing, an expansive chest voice, plenty of swagger and ping in his high notes. Dupuis was a late jump-in, but you wouldn’t know it from the intensity of his confrontation with Jagde. Dupuis sang in a velvet baritone which could turn nasty as the occasion arose (in this cast, Alvaro is the mentally stronger of the two).

Sondra Radvanovsky threw herself into the characterisation of Leonora, but her vocal performance was mixed. She has power to burn at both ends of the range and her voice could soar magnificently above the chorus without losing any of its sweetness – you could easily imagine why they love her at the Met, whose giant house is so hard to fill. But she gave some uncertain pianissimi, often with the vowels widened horizontally. Intelligibility was poor. Evgeny Stavinsky was an elegant, urbane Padre Guardiano with the smoothest of bass delivery.

There were many performances to savour in the smaller roles, with particular mention to Carlo Bosi, who made the itinerant pedlar Trabuco into exactly the sort of comic character that Shakespeare love to put into his tragedies. Forza has a whole series of big chorus numbers and the Royal Opera Chorus were on outstanding form in delivering them.

The orchestral performance wasn’t as consistently enthralling. Although the basic sound of the orchestra was good throughout, some of Sir Mark Elder's tempi felt on the slow side, which gave space to solo lines but could make whole passages drag. On a number of occasions, conductor and singers did not seem to be of one mind, with singers sounding reluctant to throw their all into a phrase for fear of mistiming its coordination with the orchestra.

So no, not a perfect production of a perfect opera, but thoroughly enjoyable, reaching the heart of the drama at every turn: Leonora’s insane hesitation over her elopement was wrenchingly tragic; the rowdiness of the inn scene and her desperate attempts to hide from Carlo was grippingly tense; her abandonment into the care of Padre Guardiano was both soothing and disturbing in its religiosity; Carlo and Alvaro’s friendship and subsequent confrontation in the army camp was electric. The closing triumph of revenge over hope was truly bleak.