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The Times, January 6 2014 |
Neil Fisher |
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Verdi: La forza del destino, München, 22. Dezember 2013 |
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La forza del destino, Bavarian State Opera, Nationaltheater, Munich |
La forza del destino at Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich |
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At the end of the Verdi-Wagner anniversary year the Bavarian State Opera
pulled off an extraordinary feat. Did you think opera only embraced faith,
blood, sex and guilt in Wagner’s Parsifal? Martin Kušej’s searching
production of La forza del destino reveals that his Italian contemporary
went there 20 years before.
The result is not comfortable viewing but
it goes no farther than Verdi did himself. “La vita è inferno,” sings
Alvaro, or “life is hell”. Here this is not Italian hyperbole but understood
honestly. The war that flings around the protagonists of The Force of
Destiny is messy, atrocious and familiar: Martin Zehetgruber’s designs
reference the splintered steel girders of the destroyed World Trade Center.
The use of 9/11 imagery is by now a familiar trope, but Zehetgruber’s
gravity-defying sets almost seem to catch the cast in mid-freefall as
civilisation implodes.
A world infected by constant terrorism is also
a plausible context for the way in which the characters in Forza seem to
spin around each other without recognition or understanding. Jonas
Kaufmann’s traumatised Alvaro and Anja Harteros’s equally damaged Leonora
are on opposite sides: the former becomes a freedom fighter, possibly of
Islamic persuasion (though it’s rarely emphasised, Verdi’s librettist
originally made him a half-caste Inca), while Leonora returns to the harsh
Christianity of her repressive family. Verdi’s queasy feelings about
organised religion can rarely have found a more appropriate realisation than
the spooky cult evoked here: a barefoot chorus who give Leonora a full-body
baptism. And yet, helped by Asher Fisch’s diaphanous, long-breathed
conducting, the message of compassion and expiation shines movingly through.
Again, this is not how one is used to hearing Verdi, but it’s done with
sincerity and élan.
This is a luxurious ensemble. Kaufmann and
Harteros are both on top form, he husky and neurotic, she floating some
sublime pianissimos while saving plenty of power for the big moments. A
stylish Ludovic Tézier, as the couple’s nemesis Don Carlo, is terrifically
impassioned too and it’s a mark of this production’s clarity of purpose that
he seems as much a victim as everyone else. I warmed less to Renato
Girolami’s granite-voiced Melitone and Nadia Krasteva’s hammy Preziosilla —
the fun-loving gypsy is perhaps the one character Kušej can’t fathom — but
Munich has done Verdi proud here. Two more performances before the
production returns in July.
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