Manzonian Verdi

RM This piece is crucial to La Scala's relationship with Verdi. He once again expressly offered his work to this theatre with the final version of La Forza del destino. It was the first of four “new versions” at La Scala, along with Aida, Simon Boccanegra and Don Carlo, which would precede the last two masterpieces, Otello and Falstaff.
RC La forza del destino is the opera of Giuseppe Verdi's reconciliation with La Scala, from which the composer had left after the premiere of Joan of Arc. An immense amount of time had passed. The fact that Verdi personally conducted the second version of the opera in 1869 is a remarkable historical moment.

RM What are the new features of the final La Scala version?
RC It has three. First, there's the Sinfonia, which I've been conducting for almost half a century, and which always elicits an outstanding response from audiences around the world; then the ronda; and finally, the concluding trio, in which Verdi's purpose was cathartic. As the pieces written from scratch for Milan show, timbral research is a key feature of the final version. Take the Ronda. It is an extraordinary page, unfortunately often cut, a sombre, nocturnal page made up of empty wings. It is a Verdi that focuses on the charm of timbre and not on the rhythmic values that we are used to associating with his music instead.  

RM How are you approaching this Dec. 7?
RC This is the 16th Verdi opera that I have conducted. I have never conducted La forza del destino in its entirety, although I have offered many of its excerpts in concert form. There are great emotional difficulties in this challenge. Bear in mind, too, that we will be performing the opera in the unabridged critical edition of 2005 by Philip Gossett and William Holmes, which sacrifices nothing of the definitive version and restores it in an improved version, free from the errors that ruined the 19th-century printed score, the entire preparation of which Verdi did not personally supervise.

RM What do you love about this score?
RC There are seven sublime moments that I prefer. I say this clearly from the perspective of the conductor, who is responsible for directing the entire musical discourse, which requires a very different kind of engagement than that of the audience. The first is the Sinfonia, which is memorable and replaces the original Prelude, a work in which we hear the highlights of the opera quoted. La forza del destino is the last Verdi opera to include a symphony. Then there is the second act finale, "La Vergine degli angeli," a piece so moving in its musical heights that it recalls the great moments of collective prayer in Nabucco and Lombardi, with the added bonus of impressive melodic purity. It is a wonderfully transparent page in which the orchestra accompanies only with a figure of triplets and the intervention of the harp. The piano rehearsal with Anna Netrebko was absolutely moving; it is a page she feels very deeply.

RM From the mystical ecstasy, one is plunged into the more tormented drama.
RC Yes, and Verdi modulates it in different ways. Take, for example, the introduction to Act III, which precedes Alvaro's romance "O tu che in seno agli angeli", a long page dominated by the clarinet solo, to which Verdi gives a profound dramaturgical meaning. There is a formal perfection here that brings it close to absolute music. Then there is Don Carlo's romanza, "Urna fatale." The mood at this point in the opera is already one of great tension. Here the repeated rhythm of triplets in the strings gives a sense of obsession that, though simple and seemingly predictable, literally makes you gasp. In that great and beloved page that is "Pace, mio Dio", note, beyond the beauty of the writing, the rarefaction of the timbre, the intention to simplify the symphonic apparatus by privileging the harp, a supporting element always expressed in triplets, accompanied by the pizzicato of the strings. In this apparent simplicity, tragedy explodes.

RM On the other hand, in this piece, one of the most important roles in Verdi's catalogue is attributed to the comic register, which was completely silent in Don Carlo.
RC Indeed, Verdi's greatness should be admired when he tackles the tragicomic genre, as in the duet Padre Guardiano - Fra Melitone "Del mondo i disinganni", no matter how much less profound it may seem in other places. The comic register, already experimented with in Un ballo in maschera, returns here, as it did in Falstaff. If you pay attention, you might think that this is the maestro's last opera. It is sung by characters who are by no means minor. Referring to Preziosilla and Melitone, Verdi said that "these roles are very important and, in a certain sense, the first in the opera". The interplay between Padre Guardiano and Melitone's sardonic and sarcastic interventions is very modern.

RM There is one page missing from these seven wonders....
RC The seventh page, sublime, is the final trio, “Non imprecare, umiliati.” Beyond the melodic beauty of the interweaving of the three voices, beware of the orchestration, to which Verdi pays paramount attention. He employs the bass clarinet, so far not used in the opera, never heard until now. It is the bass clarinet that lends a deep sense of torment with its sombre, sinister melody. Since I like to enhance timbral surprises, I assure you that I will make sure it is heard. As I did in Luciano Berio's finale of Turandot, when the bass clarinet quoted the phrase “Tu che di gel sei cinta,” at the conclusion of that stupendous finale. In my interpretation here at La Scala I had greatly enhanced the dynamics of that passage, more so than Berio requested. Verdi arrives in this trio at a rarefied finale, a clear anticipation of that in Aida, something fading away, dying in the most tragic and desolate sense. To me this part of Forza sounds precisely like the preparation of the grand finale of that other masterpiece (which I love and have conducted so much), which Verdi would have written in a few short years from the final version of La forza del destino.

RM With La forza del destino Verdi again chose the grand opéra format, a few years after the Vespri siciliani, a format that was no longer fashionable even then. What attracted you to that kind of performance?
RC The opera is organized by scenes, stages of a journey and of the lives of individuals and people, as would occur in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. Among my father's books I recently found a text by Gino Roncaglia, L'ascensione creatrice di Giuseppe Verdi, from 1940, which I had read as a boy. It says: “The libretto of La forza del destino can be considered a zibaldone. It has everything: gunshots, escapes, chases, diverse crowds, taverns, pilgrims, disguises, sacred vestments of a penitent, encampment, merchants, sutlers, gypsies, a battle, betrayed secrets, soup ladling to the poor, duels, fratricides, tavern, convent, camp life.” This kaleidoscopic sum of situations is monstrous and, in a certain sense, Manzonian. It is fascinating to think that Verdi was so drawn to Manzoni, so enraptured by his admiration for the writer, that he might have considered for a moment the idea of conceiving I promessi sposi as an opera (think what we would have today). It is frightening to think how it is possible to manage all this as elements of stage presence, as an all-encompassing spectacle. Verdi could do it. It was not for nothing that Piave worked for a long time with the maestro in St. Agatha. Verdi had already thought of organizing the opening drama according to the scenes he was interested in, but he needed a librettist with whom he had a complex relationship, as he would also be in the transition from the St. Petersburg version to the Milan version, collaborating with Ghislanzoni, who would become the librettist of Aida.

RM To complicate matters, Verdi had also asked Piave to insert into the story a scene from a drama by Schiller, one of his great literary loves... What is the role of the chorus in this impressive narrative?
RC The chorus, which Verdi often divided into male and female parts, participates a lot, is the protagonist of many interventions, especially, but not exclusively, in the comic scenes. In fact, there are also moments of suspension of the action in function of spiritual situations, as in the great scene introduced by the organ. We also often hear the chorus at a distance, singing from within.

RM This is the 21st production of this work in more than a century and a half, but only the second in this millennium, with a single performance on December 7, 60 years ago.
RC It has been 25 years, since 1999, since the definitive Milanese version of La forza del destino was performed at La Scala. Equally incredible is what you have just mentioned, namely that the opera has been missing from the opening night for no less than 59 years, since Gianandrea Gavazzeni opened the 1965/66 season under the direction of Margherita Wallmann. It was, however, more fortunate than Rigoletto, the only one of Verdi's masterpieces that has never opened a season at La Scala. Don Carlo, on the other hand, triumphs over all titles as season opener, as it happily did a year ago, but almost 60 years later, La forza del destino will return to the Piermarini auditorium on December 7.

Raffaele Mellace
Translation by Alexa Ahern