|
|
|
|
Broadway World, Mar. 22, 2019 |
by Flora Seymour |
|
Verdi: La forza del destino, London, ab 21. März 2019 |
|
BWW Review: LA FORZA DEL DESTINO, Royal Opera House
|
|
Not since a memorable La traviata in 2008 have superstars Anna Netrebko and
Jonas Kaufmann appeared together at the Royal Opera House.
Small
wonder, then, that their pairing as fate-thwarted lovers Leonora and Don
Alvaro in Verdi's sprawling tragedy La Forza del Destino sent the Royal
Opera House booking system into meltdown, with tickets soon appearing on
external sites for four-figure sums.
No sooner had that excitement
subsided than the usual rumours started circulating: one or other of the
stars would pull out - both have form. And when Kaufmann failed to appear
for the dress rehearsal, the doom-mongers' chatter gained volume.
But, in a nicely operatic irony, a piece about malign fate and blighted
opportunity saw stars - both heavenly and closer to home - align. All were
present and radiantly, sumptuously correct on opening night, Netrebko and
Kaufmann just the gloss on a cast of a depth and breadth you only rarely
hear.
"An inexorable fate drive me on," proclaims Leonora, while her
would-be lover Don Alvaro is the luckless "prey of fate". Even Leonora's
brother and (spoiler) eventual murderer Don Carlo sees his vengeance as
"written in the book of fate".
But, despite all of this, La Forza del
Destino really isn't a tragedy of fate at all. Luck plays at best a
supporting role in a story about implacable hatred, racism, religious guilt
and bitterness - all the worse for being dressed up as righteous vengeance
and justice.
Christof Loy's new production has little interest in any
of this. The question of Alvaro's mixed-race origins (he's frequently
described as a "mulatto") is left untouched, while the broader canvass of
wartime conflict - tensions both within and between nations - is painted in
only the most generalised of terms.
What it does deliver on, thanks
to designer Christian Schmidt, is spectacle. This is a handsome,
stage-filling show that turns the screw on a rather unwieldy drama by
bringing it full circle.
We open (in flashback) in the once-grand
Calatrava mansion in Seville, watching a young Leonora and her brothers
enacting a juvenile Pieta. To deliver the grown-up heroine not to the
isolated hermit's cave of the libretto but back to this place in Act IV is
to tighten the claustrophobic sense of destiny, making up for the rather
gauche spectacle of Act III's chorus finale, where all the dancers and
gimmicks in the world can't equal the electricity between the two male
leads.
Because, while Netrebko makes an opulent Leonora - a role
debut that shows off an increasingly sooty and weighted lower register -
risking all vocally (if never quite dramatically) and taking us right to the
edge of desperation in "Pace, pace mio Dio", she and Kaufmann seem to
perform at rather than with one another in the opera's rare moments of
confrontation. It's the complicated bromance between Alvaro and Carlo that
draws out Verdi's real power with a duet, providing the platform from which
Kaufmann and Ludovic Tezier dive to such heights and depths here.
Kaufmann makes the craggy reticence of Alvaro work for him in delivery whose
bluntness adds interest to this cipher of a man, but it's Tezier, all
burnished glow and relentless line, who is really at home in this writing -
surely, since the cruel loss of Hvorostovsky, the finest Verdi baritone
working today?
Only a little less exciting is the pairing between the
mighty Ferruccio Furlanetto as the stern Padre Guardiano and Alessandro
Corbelli as his garrulous sidekick Fra Melitone. Add to this support from
comic veteran Carlo Bosi as peddler Trabuco and an Alcalde full of promise
from Jette Parker Young Artist Michael Mofidian, and you have an
unassailable line-up.
Only Veronica Simeoni's Preziosilla is miscast,
lacking the power to propel her around Verdi's demanding, low-lying writing,
even if she can shimmy with the best of them in Otto Pichler's rather
intrusive choreography.
Loy's production has plenty of flaws. Its
time-travelling refusal to settle in era or place weakens its already
fragile dramatic grip, and filmed projections add unnecessary melodrama to
an already over-the-top plot, as does a misguided attempt to sex-up
Leonora's visit to the monastery.
But really none of that matters
when the music is this good. Antonio Pappano propels Verdi's juggernaut of a
score with control pitched right on the brink of chaos - scowling dark with
fury and risk and pathos. His cast match him for thrills, and the result is
as exhilarating as it is unstoppable.
|
|
|
|
|
|