Opera is such a multi-faceted art form that you never know what’s going to leap out at you, even in a performance of an opera you know and love. In the case of La forza del destino at La Scala, it was Ludovic Tézier who blew me away with one of the all time great pieces of Verdi baritone singing.
Don Carlo di Vargas, let us be clear, is not a pleasant character, an avenging fury inexorably bent on retribution for a crime that wasn’t even a crime. Tézier painted Carlo’s anger and steel in vivid vocal colours: when Alvaro has eventually agreed to a duel, his cry of “Finalmente!” was ecstatic and bone-chilling. But Tézier’s is a Rolls-Royce of a voice: far from using a growl or a snarl, he wraps the villainy in velvet power that delights the ear even as his character repels you. Verdi is brutal on his baritones, sending them to the top of their range for extended spells, but Tézier made light of that, the smoothness and perfect diction never faltering – it’s as if the man doesn’t have a passaggio to get in the way.
As Alvaro, Brian Jagde was at his strongest in their duets, the contrast between the tenor’s urgency and the baritone’s steel wonderfully brought out in both music and gesture. His solo passages were more mixed: the voice quality and characterisation were good, but there were instances of disconnect from the orchestra, the rhythm being pulled just too far. Riccardo Chailly’s conducting was generally effective, with a few slips not distracting overly from reliable pacing and richly varied orchestral colours.
Audiences expect perfection from Anna Netrebko. On this occasion, they got something very close to it. Maybe this isn’t the biggest dramatic soprano voice you'll hear, but Netrebko exudes religious devotion, her pure beauty of voice and control of phrase are irresistible and when it comes to a line soaring above the ensemble, there’s nothing to touch her. Leonora’s “Pace, Pace, mio Dio”, was magnificent, sending the final stages of the story on its path to eventual redemption.
Alexander Vinogradov was an urbane Padre Guardiano, with a surprising combination of youthfulness and gravity. Many of the lesser roles in La forza give chances to shine, and the cast was very strong in depth: Huanhong Li was a notable Alcade and Carlo Bosi an engaging Trabuco. The “grace after meals” quartet between Li, Bosi, Tézier and Vasilisa Berzhanskaya’s Preziosilla was a delight. Berzhanskaya put plenty of character into the role of the gypsy but didn’t quite boss the show as she might, not least because she had trouble competing with a La Scala chorus at the very top of their game. Although this isn’t an opera with standout choral numbers like “Va, pensiero”, the chorus plays an important backing role and they thrilled throughout the evening.
Leo Muscato’s new staging is both eye-catching and ambitious, perhaps overly so. His first fundamental is that this is a wartime opera and that war is timeless, so all four acts are put into military settings, each with costumes from a different era: red coats for the 18th-century War of the Austrian Succession, Confederate grey for the 19th-century US Civil War, the trappings of trench warfare virtuosically portrayed for World War 1, flak jackets and assault rifles for the present day. Visually, Muscato makes heavy use of a revolve so that the scenery is constantly in motion under our eyes. This allows him to create several visually stunning tableaus, it avoids ‘park and bark’ and provides a constant flow of visual interest. Eventually, though, it becomes wearisome and I couldn’t help but think this was a complex and expensive way to express a relatively simple concept.
Muscato’s second fundamental is to represent the opera as a contest between revenge and faith, with faith winning in the end through the force of Padre Guardiano’s prayer. That accords neatly with the many moments of redemption in the music and it was well expressed by the acting, but it was marred by a rather clumsy moment at the end, when flowers start sprouting from a barren tree stump as Leonora breathes her last. There are various dissonant moments in the staging: another comes in Alvaro and Carlo’s final duel, when they discard the knives that Carlo has thoughtfully provided in favour of picking up improvised weapons that look like the lead pipe from Cluedo.
The prima at La Scala is always a major event, the more so here because the opera is one of Milan’s own (at least in this version: we’ll set aside its St Petersburg premiere). With an interesting staging and their ability to attract the cream of the cream of singers, this one fulfilled all expectations.
