Verdi: La forza del destino ****
Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, 2nd February 2018
When the entire plot is triggered by a freak accident, you can’t blame director David Pountney for making Fate itself the opera’s key character. The first scene of Verdi’s La forza del destino ends when the Marquis of Calatrava, having blundered across his daughter’s elopement, is killed when the pistol discarded by her lover, Don Alvaro, accidentally goes off. Pountney takes the peripheral characters of Preziosilla – a war-mongering gypsy – and Leonora’s maid, and turns them into Destiny, driving the opera from the moment she strikes her staff three times on the fate-ridden chords that open the overture.
Justina Gringyte (Preziosilla)
© Richard Hubert SmithDavid
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