Arts & Events

In my July 2 review of the recent San Francisco Opera concert in which music director Eun Sun Kim conducted music by Verdi, I took note of General Manager Matthew Shilvock’s introductory remarks situating that concert’s excerpts within the overall arch of Giuseppe Verdi’s long and illustrious career. Indeed, this perspective struck responsive chords in me, and long after that wonderful concert I continued to pursue thoughts about the overall trajectory of Verdi’s operas. In this endeavour I was aided by owning several brilliant videos of late Verdi operas, most notably, the Metropolitan Opera’s 1980 production of UN BALLO IN MASCHERA with Luciano Pavarotti and Katia Ricciarelli; and the 1958 production at Teatro San Carlo in Naples of LA FORZA DEL 

DESTINO with Renata Tebaldi, Franco Corelli, and Boris Christoff. As for DON CARLO, which is one of my all-time favorite operas, much of it is deeply ingrained in my musical memory, and these memories were reactivated by the splendid singing of Nicole Car and Etienne Dupuis as well as the stirring conducting of Eun Sun Kim as they performed excerpts from DON CARLO in SF Opera’s recent concert. So here I offer my continuing thoughts on the overall arch of Verdi’s work, particularly as manifested in the latter part of his career. 

UN BALLO IN MASCHERA, as many observers have noted, deals with the competing threads of personal and public pressures on a ruler of state. Whether portrayed as Governor Riccardo in the early American colony of Boston or as King Gustavus in Sweden, the principal character of UN BALLO IN MASCHERA, in whatever version, endlessly deliberates over what he should do about his secret love for Amelia, the wife of his best friend and political ally, Renato. In this deliberation he must weigh his personal desires against his duties to his best friend and to the people he governs. This is an intensely inward drama, taking place in the psyche of this opera’s principal character. This inward concentration gives UN BALLO IN MASCHERA remarkable cohesion. 

LA FORZA DEL DESTINO, whether in the 1862 version or the 1869 revision, is a sprawling work. It lacks either the cohesion of Verdi’s preceding UN BALLO IN MASCHERA or the condensed yet flawed revisions of his subsequent DON CARLO. Right from the start of FORZA, indeed, right from the overture, there is an valiant attempt by Verdi to posit a hoped-for unity to this sprawling drama by emphasising tin the orchestra the relentless musical theme of the force of destiny. This almost works. In fact, its frequent musical recurrence throughout the opera does indeed lend a seeming coherence to this sprawling drama. However, let us look closely at the drama itself. 

Right from the opening scene of FORZA, it is clear that the two main characters, Leonora and Alvaro, are from very different backgrounds. Leonora is a young, unmarried daughter of a noble Spanish family. Alvaro, however, is a half-breed from the Spanish colony of Peru. Son of an Inca princess and a Spanish colonial Viceroy father, Alvaro has come to Spain to argue that his father’s joining of a failed Inca rebellion was a noble venture. Once in Spain Alvaro has fallen in love with Leonora di Vargas, a noble young woman who returns his love despite the difference in their origins. Leonora’s father, however, the Marquis of Calatrava, vehemently opposes this love of his daughter for the Peruvian half-breed, 

Often LA FORZA DEL DESTINO is staged in ways that obfuscate this undercurrent of colonialism and racism, making it seem, instead, that this is just a matter of a dispute between two aristocratic families from Spain, rather than one involving two different races, one Old World aristocracy and one New World aristocracy, the latter of which, needless to say, is not acknowledged by the former. One might also note that two different patriarchal societies are here involved, the Spanish and the Peruvian, for in the actions that ensue in FORZA both sides argue in patriarchal terms. 

On Leonora’s side, her father argues against the love of Leonora for Alvaro because of their vastly different racial and social origins. Moreover, when Leonora’s father accidentally dies when struck by a stray bullet from the gun Alvaro has thrown aside, it is Leonora’s brother Carlo, who in patriarchal fealty subsequently seeks to avenge his father’s death by pursuing Alvaro and vowing to kill him. On Alvaro’s side, we recall that he came from Peru to Spain to argue on behalf of his father who was unjustly imprisoned and executed over his participation in an Inca rebellion against oppressive Spanish colonial rule of their land. 

Although it has been said that unlike in UN BALLO IN MASCHERA, where the misfortunes of Riccardo/Gustavus stem from within his own impetuous nature, in FORZA the trials and tribulations of Leonora and Alvaro all stem from without, that is, from the strictures of a patriarchal aristocratic society that imposes its will as an implacable destiny for anyone who opposes it. While in some ways this is true, I want to emphasise, however, that FORZA offers a vivid and nuanced portrayal of how different individuals respond inwardly, either accepting or resisting, these external strictures of a patriarchal society. In many ways, FORZA seems to me, like UN BALLO IN MASCHERA, an intensely inward drama. Following FORZA’S opening scene, the principal characters are never again seen together until the opera’s final scene. Instead, they are seen either alone, pondering inwardly their fate or, as in the case of Leonora, in dialogue with someone who may (or may not) agree to help once she has has fled her family home in fear of her brother and not knowing what has befallen Alvaro once he fled the opening scene in horror over the accidental death of Leonora’s father. 

It is interesting to examine Verdi’s attitude toward the Church both within FORZA and in his subsequent opera, DON CARLO. In FORZA, two characters represent the Church, Fra Melitone and Padre Guardiano. The former is officious, lacking pity for the oppressed and resentful of his underling status in the Church hierarchy; while the latter, his superior, is full of compassion for the desperate plight of Leonora, who has come to Padre Guardiano’s remote mountain monastery to seek a haven where she may spend her life in religious devotion. Without divulging to the monks of his monastery Leonora’s identity or story, Padre Guardiano offers her a safe haven in a cave near his monastery, which Leonora thankfully accepts. In sharp contrast to the magnanimous and compassionate Padre Guardiano in FORZA Is the Grand Inquisitor in DON CARLO. This latter Church figure, who Verdi insisted in notes to the libretto of DON CARLO, should be portrayed as “very old and nearly blind,” is clearly the embodiment of the Spanish Inquisition’s iron-willed attempt to root out any hint of heresy or resistance against the strict interpretation of Church doctrine. 

Much of the sprawling character of FORZA comes from the various crowd scenes in which the character of Preziosilla is so central. These scenes all involve the common people, who are depicted as marginal to the affairs of the aristocracy. The common people are either soldiers, displaced peasants, religious pilgrims, camp followers, unscrupulous merchants (Trabucco), or gypsies. Preziosilla herself seems to be a gypsy, as she practises fortune-telling, a traditionally gypsy function in Spain. Preziosilla repeatedly sings the praises of war even for those common soldiers who fight blindly for aristocratic causes they do not understand. However, her praise of war is simply that it offers the common soldier a chance to achieve glory in battle and thus gain promotion in the military and thereby attain a better, more prosperous life. In fact, Preziosilla seems to embody the wisdom of society’s marginals like herself. When she listens to the disguised Carlo’s attempt to pass himself off as a student named Pareda, Preziosilla shrewdly sees right through Carlo’s ruse and declares to herself that he is no student. In short, these crowd scenes, and Preziosilla’s role in them, reveal Verdi’s desire to make this story more than just an aristocratic dispute and instead to paint a wider musical canvas that includes the common people and marginals like Preziosilla. Further, let us not forget the all-important fact that Alvaro himself, in spite of being the son of an aristocratic Spanish father, is considered a marginal in Spanish society by being a half-breed from Peru, where his father was executed for betraying Spanish colonial rule. 

Seen in this larger context, it is clear that in LA FORZA DEL DESTINO as well as in his next opera, DON CARLO, Verdi was deeply concerned with portraying serious humanitarian issues as they unfolded in the private lives and loves of individual citizens. While the personal fates of Verdi’s characters in these two operas command the forefront of our attention, they are clearly set against the backdrop of wider social and even racial issues such as colonialism in FORZA, and another form of colonialism or, if you prefer, imperialism, this time against the people of European Flanders, in DON CARLO. In these two late operas, Verdi clearly aligns himself with the oppressed marginals who seek to free themselves from discrimination and rule by others.