la forza del destino: Opera Holland Park (From The Oxford Times)

la forza del destino: Opera Holland Park

2:28pm Wednesday 28th July 2010 in

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Once one of the most popular of Verdi’s operas — because it is one of his most melodic — La forza del destino is rarely seen today, though its music is well-known, the overture especially. Its neglect has much to do with a melodramatic plot in which, as one critic noted, “the destiny which is proclaimed in the title tends to be replaced by the less compelling factor of coincidence”.

By opera standards, the storyline is not complicated. The Marquis di Calatrava (Graeme Broadbent) is accidentally shot dead by a pistol carelessly thrown down — in an act of submission — by Don Alvaro (tenor Peter Auty) when he is surprised by the aristocrat in the act of eloping with his daughter Leonora (soprano Gweneth-Ann Jeffers, pictured with Peter Auty). The lovers are separated, she going into hiding as a hermit in a monastery and Alvaro — under an assumed name — heading to war where he is befriended, and eventually unmasked, by Leonora’s vengeful brother Don Carlo (baritone Mark Stone) before ending up — but of course! — a monk in the very monastery hiding his loved one.

Director Martin Duncan’s welcome revival of the work at Holland Park does not attempt to mask — how could it? — the absurdities of the plot. Rather it offers a thrilling marriage between action and music which, while focusing on the principal characters, supplies a rich sense of happier lives being led around them during troubled times. These, the costumes suggest, are the early years of the fascist era in Italy.

In this, notable contributions are made by a much-employed big-voiced 40-strong chorus — variously soldiers, townsfolk and monks — and by Carole Wilson as the canny gypsy fortune teller Preziosilla, Olivia Ray as Leonora’s servant Curra and — especially — Donald Maxwell as the sharp-tongued but good-hearted Fra Melitone. His antics are viewed with a benevolent understanding by Padre Guardiano, beautifully sung by bass Mikhail Svetlov, whose great duet with Leonora is one of the highlights of a long but rewarding evening.

Conducted by Stuart Stratford, who encourages excellent work from the orchestra, La forza del destino is given again tonight, on Saturday and on August 4, 6, 10, 12 and 14. Box office 0845 230 9769 (www.ohp.rbkc.gov.uk).