Verdi’s ‘La Forza,’ Born Under A Bad Sign

One hundred fifty years ago today, Giuseppe Verdi first mounted his opera La Forza del Destino (“The Force of Destiny”) on a stage in St. Petersburg, Russia. Today, La Forza is considered one of Verdi’s masterpieces, but it wasn’t always that way. The story of Don Alvaro, whose love for the aristocratic Leonora incurs the wrath of her family, is violent and chaotic, and it flopped on its first run.

“People found it crazy. People found it emotionally incontinent,” says William Berger, radio commentator for the Metropolitan Opera in New York and author of the book Verdi With a Vengeance. “Part of it has to do with the extremes of the emotion and the abruptness with which they change from comedy to tragedy, to absurdity, to religiosity, to drinking songs, to hate.”

Verdi considered his opera a failure, but he decided to give it another try. He retooled the ending so that the two lovers, whose gruesome deaths bring the original story to its close, are reunited in heaven. That and a few other alterations changed the tone of the entire work, and when it was performed before a much tougher crowd back home in Italy seven years later, La Forza finally became a success.