LA FORZA DEL DESTINO

Giuseppe Verdi (1813 - 1901)
Opera in four acts in Italian
Libretto: Francesco Maria Piave after a Spanish drama by Duke of Rivas Don Alvaro o La Fuerza de Sino
Premièr at Bolshoi Kamenny, St. Petersburg – 10 November 1862
05†, 07 July 1957
Bühnen der Stadt, Köln
 
WITHIN THE FRAME OF LA SCALA'S FIRST POST-WAR TOUR TO GERMANY

Conductor: Antonino Votto
Chorus master: Norberto Mola
Stage director: Mario Frigerio
Scene and costumes: Nicola Benois
 
Donna Leonora di Vargas LEYLA GENCER soprano [Role debut]
Preziosilla a gypsy GABRIELLA CARTURAN mezzo-soprano
Don Alvaro GIUSEPPE DI STEFANO tenor
Don Carlo di Vargas Leonora’s Brother ALDO PROTTI baritone
Padre Guardiano a Franciscan monk CESARE SIEPI bass
Marchese di Calatrava Leonora’s father FRANCO CALABRESE bass
Fra Malitone a Franciscan monk ENRICO CAMPI baritone
Curra Leonora’s maid STEFANIA MALAGU’ mezzo-soprano
The Mayor of Hornachuelos FRANCO PIVA baritone
Trabuco a muleteer ANGELO MERCURIALI tenor
A Surgeon ANGELO MERCURIALI tenor
 
Time: Middle of Eighteenth Century
Place: Spain and Italy
 
† Recording date 
 
Photos © ERIO PICCAGLIANI, Milano 

Sketches © NICOLA BENOIS 
 














LEYLA GENCER’S LA FORZA SCORES


CORRIERE DELLA SERA                                                
1957.06.30      

CORRIERE DELLA SERA                                                
1957.07.03 

CORRIERE DELLA SERA                                                
1957.07.07                                                                                                

LA VANGUARDIA                                               
1957.07.19  

THE TIMES                                          
1957.08.15

CORRIERO DA MANHA                                        
1957.08.18

OPERA MAGAZINE                                          
1957 September

OPERA MAGAZINE                                          
1957 November

TABLET

2024.03.08
DAVID P. GOLDMAN
The Met’s New ‘Therapeutic’ Forza Is a Disaster
A modern re-imagining turns tragedy to farce.
In the woke environment of the arts in New York City, where everything is and must always be about race, the Metropolitan Opera has somehow taken the one opera in the standard repertoire that is explicitly about race and transformed it into a ham-handed Freudian tale about a girl with daddy issues. The Feb. 26 premiere of a misguided update of Giuseppe Verdi’s The Force of Destiny, reimagined by the Polish filmmaker Mariusz Trelínsky, was one of the Metropolitan Opera’s less glorious moments. Freudian images are layered on with a trowel, past the point of absurdity, without a nod to the dramatic material, its historical context, and Verdi’s somber, moving score, which is given an incongruously perky reading by the Met’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
Despite its contrived Romantic plotting, La Forza del Destino remains one of theatre’s most convincing love stories, because it is much more than a love story: It is a portrait of a doomed society that destroys its children. The terrible love that consumes Leonora and Alvaro—love that is as strong as death and harsh as the grave—doesn’t occur randomly on dating apps. It surges when lovers see in the other the solution to intolerable life circumstances—in Leonora’s case, the stench of decaying nobility, and in Alvaro’s, the stigma of racial mixture. Leonora wants out, and Alvaro wants in, and each represents salvation and redemption to the other—and that is why their love is so fierce, and so doomed. Historical context is everything in this opera.
Verdi’s source was the wildly popular 1835 drama by the Marquis of Rivas, the preeminent Spanish liberal politician of his generation and briefly his country’s prime minister. Its title, La Fuerza del Sino, should be rendered, The Force of Fate, rather than Destiny. This distinction is characteristically Jewish. The standard Spanish language sources treat sino and destino as synonyms, but the leading Orthodox website for Spanish-speaking Jews, Mesilot ha-Torá, offers a translation of an essay by Rabbi Avi Weiss on the critical distinction between sino and destino. While fate casts each of us into a dimension of life we cannot control, destiny, writes Weiss, following Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, “is an active existence in which humanity confronts the environment into which she or he was cast … Humanity’s mission in this world is to turn fate into destiny, an existence that is passive and influenced to an existence that is active and influential.”
Greek tragedy knows only fate, because, as Heraclitus said, a man’s mores are his guiding spirit (usually translated as “character is destiny”). The lovers’ desperate passion for each other stems from their hope of rising above a decaying society that nonetheless will destroy them. The best modern tragedy, from Fernando de Rojas’ crypto-Jewish drama La Celestina through Shakespeare and Schiller, tells us that it could have been otherwise, and the fault lies not in the stars but in us.
Baritone Igor Golavatenko as the avenging Don Carlo delivered a persuasive, note-perfect rendering of his role.The Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen sang the lead role of Leonora, and has a gorgeous instrument, at least in the middle and high registers, but inconsistent control of it. At her best she is “electrifying,” as the Met declares in its advertising, but that is partly due to the uncertainty as to whether she will nail a high note with precision or lose it in a wobble. She is a brilliant and convincing singing actress, and a commanding stage presence, but not a vocalist of the stature of Leontyne Price, Martina Arroyo, Deborah Voigt, and other great Leonoras of the Met’s past. Verdi demands a soprano with a powerful low register, where Davidsen is barely audible. As her paramour Alvaro, tenor Brian Jagde improved steadily through the evening and gave a moving conclusion to the opera. Mezzo Judit Kutasi wobbled her way painfully through the role of Preziosilla.
Although it follows the conventional division into musical numbers, La Forza del Destino nonetheless integrates its musical elements more successfully than any Italian opera that preceded it. Verdi repurposes some of his strongest musical elements for dramatic effect. Compare (at 23:10) Leonora’s defiant declaration of love for the mixed-race Alvaro—“I will follow you to the ends of the earth!”—to her resignation to a life of solitude and penitence (at 1:05). This is not a Wagnerian leitmotif, in which a snatch of music retains its connotation whenever it is repeated, but quite the opposite, a transformation of the music’s dramatic implications that reflects the inner changes of the character.
Several complete versions of Forza are available on YouTube, including a 1958 television broadcast with English subtitles from Naples’ Teatro San Carlo with a young Renata Tebaldi and Franco Corelli. My favourite is a 1957 audio recording with the great tenor Giuseppi di Stefano and the incomparable Leyla Gencer as Leonora, whom I heard in this role at the Verona Arena in 1967.
Forza ranks No. 11 in performances among Verdi’s operas during the past five seasons (2019-23) according to operabase.com, but its overture is the most frequently performed by far as a standalone concert piece, and with good reason. Opera overtures typically are a pastiche of tunes from the opera; Forza’s overture, composed for the 1869 La Scala production, is an integrated musical whole. The listener has the impression that Verdi reproduced the tragedy in his orchestral score, so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Spain’s national tragedy, and the personal tragedy of the opera’s doomed lovers, was the limpieza de sangre—purification of blood—Spain’s obsession 500 years before the Nazis. Spain expelled its Jews in 1492, the same year that it founded the New World empire that would corrupt it irredeemably. Spain’s aristocrats lived off the mines of the New World, enslaving large parts of the indigenous population. Fernand Braudel calculated that all of the bullion Spain extracted from the New World and then some went via Genoa and Venice to China to buy silks and spices, in an orgy of nouveau riche display that lasted the better part of two centuries before the money ran out.
Peru had won its independence from Spain in 1826, only nine years before Rivas’ play appeared; Spain did not recognize its independence until 1869. The Jews were a distant memory by then, but the issue of Spanish vs. native ancestry and the collapse of the Spanish Empire were both vivid in the public mind. Spain clung to the remnants of its possessions in the Philippines and the Caribbean until 1898.
Rivas’ play is set around 1700, at the beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession, the beginning of Spain’s long agony of internal strife and foreign intervention that culminated in the Civil War of 1936-39. The fortunes of the Calatrava family are in decline. The first character we encounter in Rivas’ drama is the gypsy Preciosilla, who offers that the vanity of the Sevillian nobility is of one piece with their poverty. She also tells of dashing “Don Alvaro the Indian,” the best bullfighter in Spain, whose courtship of the aristocratic Leonora is the talk of Seville.
Don Alvaro is the son of Peruvian colonials who instigated a revolt against Spanish rule and has Inca blood. His nemesis Don Carlo calls him a “mulatto” with “unworthy blood.” He loves Leonora de Vargas, a daughter of the Calatrava dynasty, but the family rejects him on racial grounds. A botched elopement leads to the accidental death of Leonara’s father, and her brother Carlo determines to kill the lovers. “Fate cannot separate us!” the lovers sing, and it doesn’t; the three are reunited through a series of coincidences improbable as only the Romantic stage of the 19th century could devise. These are less noisome than modern critics opine; after all, coincidence is everywhere the engine of Romantic drama (“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine”).
The lovers are separated; Leonora seeks refuge from her murderous brother and succour for her soul as a hermit, while Alvaro, who believes her to be dead, joins the army. War has metastasized through the rotten fabric of the Spanish Empire. Verdi inserts a scene from Schiller’s great drama Wallenstein’s Camp, depicting the soldier-folk and their camp followers at the beginning of the Wallenstein trilogy. Wallenstein, the great imperial generalissimo of the Thirty Years War, is obsessed by fate and consults an astrologer. Schiller shows us that “fate” lies in the actions of ordinary people who are swept out of normal existence into a war that becomes a self-feeding monster. By quoting Schiller, Verdi tells his audience—who knew Wallenstein as well as we know Casablanca—that he embraces Schiller’s critique of fate.
Trelínsky cut half of the scene adopted from Schiller and changed it from a roaring portrait of the soldateska into a USO entertainment for wounded soldiers. The Met’s program notes sniff, “There is also a Dickensian tendency to digress into slice-of-life vignettes that are only tangentially related to the main thrust of the drama and that even incorporate some buffo comedy.”
Nothing could be more clueless: As Verdi’s audience well understood, the raucous mercenaries and their traders and whores showed the disintegration of the social fabric. Real tragedy is found in the disrupted lives of ordinary people; that is what makes Rivas’ drama and Verdi’s opera so compelling, and what makes Trelínsky’s re-imagining so silly.
Alvaro ultimately takes vows at the same monastery where—unknown to him—Leonora is hidden, but Carlo tracks him down. Inflamed by Carlo’s racial insults, Alvaro kills his persecutor, but not before Carlo kills Leonora. In Rivas’ play (and the first version of Verdi’s opera), Alvaro declares, “Hell, open your mouth and swallow me! Let the sky fall. Let the human race perish. Extermination! Destruction!” Verdi then eliminated Alvaro’s suicide in a later version, and the opera now ends instead on a religious note. That is a weakness; Rivas’ nihilistic conclusion is more persuasive and more Spanish. The enlightened Duke of Rivas saw the gates of hell opening for his country, and Alvaro’s terrible declaration was a warning lest we succumb to fate rather than choose our destiny.
The director Trelínsky explains his alternate therapeutic version of Forza as follows: “Like most fathers in Verdi operas, he is domineering and even brutal in the way he exercises his authority. This permanently marks his children, who are unable to escape the roles he has given. Then, the trauma caused by his violent death is like a break in billiards. It propels all the characters along a fixed trajectory from which there is no release—not because it’s ordained by God but because it’s the way people are, because of our psychological makeup.”
If only Leonora could have found a good therapist to help her work through her daddy problem! Father Guardiano, who protects the fugitive Leonora at his monastery, appears at the opera’s conclusion in the general’s uniform of Leonora’s father, a generic military dictator surrounded by lackeys giving Hitler salutes—just in case the audience didn’t get the hint that the two “fathers” are connected. Alvaro, Spain’s best bullfighter in Rivas’ drama, first appears incongruously as a schlump in a sweatshirt, leaving Leonora’s love for him wholly unmotivated.
Updating operas with modern costumes and customs is a tricky proposition that always entails pitfalls. But the new Forza is an irredeemable disaster.
 
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/forza-is-a-disaster     
                                                         
COMPLETE RECORDING                        
1957.07.05

FROM CD BOOKLET

LA FORZA DEL DESTINO
FRANCA CELLA
Translation by Emma French
 
"La Forza del Destino" was first performed at St. Petersburg on November 10, 1862. As "Don Alvaro" it was heard at the Teatro Apollo, Rome on February 7, 1863; two weeks later, also in Italian, it was sung in Madrid. This original version was heard in New York (1865), in Vienna, Buenos Aires and at Her Majesty's Theatre, London. Verdi was not happy with the opera, or indeed its destiny. In 1869, using the libretto as revised by Antonio Ghislanzoni, he somewhat abridged the opera, this revised version being sung for the first time at Milan on February 27, 1869. This latter version (shortened, mixed up and generally tampered with) is what is now usually presented as "La Forza del Destino". Yet despite its ramshackle 'Force of Coincidence structure, the opera never really suffered the eclipse that overtook some of Verdi's post-in Traviata operas in the early years of the century.
The La Scala guest performance in Cologne boasted some of the most luminous stars around.
Leyla Gencer's career - and versatility - is in fact something to marvel at. Born in 1924 in Ankara of Turkish/Polish parents, she studied with Elvira de Hidalgo, making her debut in 1950 in Ankara as Santuzza. Subsequently she continued her studies with the legendary Giannina Arangi-Lombardi as well as Apollo Granforte. She made her Italian debut in 1954 at the San Carlo in Naples as Madame Butterfly. That same season she also sang Tatjana in "Eugene Onegin". Her rise to fame, if not stardom, was fast. She sang Tosca in Lausanne and Munich, Violetta in Palermo, Vienna, Triest and La Scala. That's all very well...but what about the versatility? Well...soon followed Charlotte in "Werther", Agathe in "Freischütz" (with Renata Scotto as Ännchen), Zandonai's "Francesca da Rimini", Blanche in the world premiere of Poulenc's "Les Dialogues des Carmélites", Marguerita and Elena in Boito's "Mefistofele", Renata in Prokoviev's "Fiery Angel", Lisa in "Pique Dame", "Figaro" Countess in Glyndebourne, not to mention central - and not so central roles in the Verdi, Donizetti and Bellini repertoire. Asked about her greatest success' she replied with inimitable poise and grandezza: 'The enthusiasm of the public was such that I only had great successes."
Giuseppe di Stefano was born in Sicily (near Catania) on July 24, 1921. When he was six years old his family moved to Milan where he sang in the church choir. He eventually started vocal studies with Luigi Montesanto. During WWII he served in the army but - tenors being a rare breed he was not involved in any active combat. After the Italian capitulation he fled to Switzerland to avoid imprisonment by the Nazis. There he started giving concerts and radio recitals. He sang Nemorino in a broadcast performance for Radio Lausanne in 1943. In 1944 he made his first recordings of Italian songs for Swiss HMV and subsequently recorded a series of operatic arias with piano accompaniment in the studios of Radio Lausanne. After the war he returned to Milan and continued his studies. He made his official stage debut on April 20, 1946, as Des Grieux in Massenet's "Manon" at the Teatro Comunale, Reggio Emilia. He made his Metropolitan debut as Duca in "Rigoletto" on February 25, 1948. He appeared at the Met regularly from 1948 to 1952. Apart from Faust his repertoire there included Rinuccio, Fenton, Rodolfo, Almaviva and Pinkerton. In 1955 he began to extend his repertoire to include spinto roles like Canio, Don José, Turridu and Andrea Chenier.
At the age of 14 Cesare Siepi joined a madrigal ensemble which specialised in Palestrina and Monteverdi. The four years he sang with this ensemble were a superb preparation for his future career. Siepi later stated that it taught him musical discipline - especially also the necessity to listen to other singers. He retained his love for Monteverdi throughout his career and in recitals he liked to include Seneca's scene from "L'Incoronazione di Poppea". Siepi made his stage debut in 1941 in Schio as Sparafucile, but the war prevented further stage appearances. In 1943 he escaped to Switzerland. In 1945 he resumed his vocal career and caused a sensation as Zaccaria in "Nabucco" and Silva in "Ernani" at the Teatro Fenice, Venice. Subsequently he joined the ensemble of La Scala, making his debut as Zaccaria opposite Gino Bechi as Nabucco, conducted by Tulio Serafin. His career really took wing in 1948 when Arturo Toscanini engaged him to sing Mefistofele and Simon Mago (Nerone) to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Arrigo Boito's death. In 1962 Siepi appeared on Broadway in a musical called "Bravo Giovanni". He played and Italian trattoria owner who manages to hold his own against a fast-food chain. This excursion into a lighter genre was not especially successful, despite superb reviews for Siepi himself. It is the real ed Giovanni-Mozart's - that many opera lovers will forever associate with Cesare Siepi. During the 1950s and 60s half of all his annual performances were as Don Giovanni. Herbert Graf's Salzburg Festival production in the Felsenreitschule starring Siepi, Grümmer, della Casa and Dermota conducted by Furtwängler was filmed in 1953.
 
LA FORZA DEL DESTINO
 
Opera in quattro atti e sette quadri di Francesco Maria Piave
Musica di Giuseppe Verdi
 
Personaggi
Il Marchese di Calatrava                             Basso
Donna Leonora, sua figlia                           Soprano
Don Carlo di Vargas, suo fratello                Baritono
Don Alvaro                                                Tenore
Preziosilla, giovane zingara                        Mezzosoprano
Padre Guardiano, Francescano                    Basso
Fra Melitone, Francescano                          Basso comico
Curra, cameriera di Leonora                        Mezzosoprano
Un Alcade                                                  Basso
Mastro Trabuco                                         Tenore
Un Chirurgo, militare spagnolo                   Basso
Basso Soprano
Coristi: Mulattieri, Paesani spagnoli e italiani, Soldati spagnoli e italiani d'ogni arma, Ordinanze relative, Reclute italiane, Frati Francescani, Poveri questuanti. Coriste: Paesane e Vivandiere spagnole e italiane, Povere questuanti.
Ballo: Paesani, Paesane e Vivandiere spagnole e ita- liane, Soldati spagnoli ed italiani. Comparse: Oste, Ostessa, Servi d'osteria, Mulattieri, Soldati italiani e spagnoli d'ogni arma, Tamburini, Trombe, Paesani, Paesane e fanciulli delle due nazioni, Saltimbanco, Venditori di ogni specie.
 
Scena: Spagna e Italia.
Epoca: Verso la metà del secolo XVIII.
 
LA FORZA DEL DESTINO
 
Colonia, luglio 1957. Il Teatro alla Scala in tournée con i suoi complessi e il fior dei suoi artisti, festeggia la riapertura del Teatro Bühnen der Stadt. Porta due opere: "La Sonnambula", con Maria Callas, nel bianco spettacolo di Luchino Visconti - Piero Tosi, e "La Forza del Destino" con Leyla Gencer, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Cesare Siepi: direttore d'entrambe Antonino Votto.
Chi era Leyla Gencer alla Scala nel '57? Aveva debuttato alla Scala solo l'anno prima nei "Dialoghi delle Carmelitane" di Poulenc, ma De Sabata l'aveva scelta per cantare in Duomo ai funerali di Toscanini (18 febbraio '57); in maggio registra per la Rai quel "Trovatore" televisivo divenuto storico; a giugno canta a Vienna "La Traviata" con Karajan; a luglio debutta "La Forza del Destino" con la Scala, a Colonia. Fu un successo trionfale, con venti chiamate; il 5 (poi il 7) luglio '57.
L'esecuzione ha la cifra Scala di quegli anni: un direttore esperto d'opera, Antonino Votto, che tutto squaderna della romanzesca tragedia verdiana, lancia i suoi cantanti tra terra e cielo e riequilibria l'opera in una oggettività che è sua etica e segno stilistico. Un tenore scaligero, Giuseppe Di Stefano, di voce solare perfin nella malinconia, che entra con l'argento vivo sull'immediatezza delle situazioni, il canto generoso e, seduttore, aperto come l'anima del suo personaggio, l'accento spavaldo. Un basso di aristocratiche altezze, Cesare Siepi: Don Giovanni indimenticabile o Padre Guardiano dal legato immenso, potente fino ad abbracciare e innalzare in preghiere quella squassata umanità, paterno nella comprensione. Un baritono, Aldo Protti, di pasta vocale e umanità verdiana. Un mezzosoprano, Gabriella Carturan, vivace, di vigore scuro; un Melitone di nitido disegno, Enrico Campi. La giovane protagonista sfodera la vocazione alle alte temperature verdiane, e le raggiunge per una via segreta, personale, calamitante.
Disegna un personaggio liricissimo e fiero, ardito e sospeso, col vero genio innocente della malasorte. La voce è lirica, bruna, morbida d'armonici e di colori. Aggredisce il fraseggio con musicalità naturale e decisa, lo rifinisce con cesellature a fil di poesia. Coglie il segreto del personaggio nel rapporto fulmineo tra tuffo d'emozione e "gesto" musicale. Immedesimarsi e reagire, a battito inarrestabile, diventa il segno della sua Leonora di Vergas. È infatti personaggio incalzato da contraddizioni, presagi, da quanto di tragedia il gran teatro del mondo può adunare, grandiosamente spinto a misurare gli spazi oltre all'umano. Già al primo atto il personaggio si scioglie dalla convenzionalità romantica delle interpretazioni tradizionali, e si fa eccitante. Non malinconica fanciulla, ma eroina stimolata a reazioni estreme, muove la frase finale del recitativo d'ingresso in un arco d'angoscia che ripiomba greve di destino, e svela il senso drammatico del pianissimo sul "sol" ("Ahi troppo!... troppo sventurata sono!"). L'aria, che può suonar lamentosa con quel tetro avvio ("Me pellegrina ed orfana"), diventa confessione appassionata di sè, col "crescendo" e "accellerando" in ritmo puntato ("Colmo di tristi immagini"). Il contemplarsi spreme angoscia: nasce "col massimo dolore" la frase lirica d'addio ("Ti lascio, ohimè, con lagrime,/ dolce mia terra! Addio"): il gesto del lasciare indugiato, il fiato sulle virgole a sincopare appena l'emozione, la scansione nitida delle lagrime, la flessibilità sul "terra! Addio." Entra Pippo Di Stefano dal verone, col tema incantatore di Alvaro, il canto inconfondibilmente luminoso, elettrizzante. Oltre i turbamenti, le titubanze da libretto, si crea subito la concordanza travolgente di due grandi cantanti, sulla stessa lunghezza d'onda. Quando l'impulsività scoperta di Alvaro sta per scioglierla dalla promessa, Leonora lo previene con scatto d'aggressività coraggiosa e appassionata: "Son tua, son tua col core, tua col core e colla vita" e s'inoltra "con slancio" nel ritmo del duetto pulsante e dolcissimo, strepitosamente legato: "Ah! seguirti fino agli ultimi confini della terra...".
La scena del Convento naviga oltre le passioni mentre tenacemente ancora il personaggio le soffre. Dal recitativo, dove ogni parola solleva orrore di tragedia, Leonora si dibatte tra abissi del destino: l'individualismo accentratore ha una definitività iperbolica ("quella notte in cui/io, del sangue di mi padre intrisa, / l'ho seguito e il perdei!"). L'intimità dello smarrimento trova naturalezza seducente in quelle consonanti disperatamente dolci che si ripetono ("Ed or mi lascia, / mi lascia. Mi sfugge!), prima del "si naturale" forte, legato, che si sprofonda nel canto "piano" (Ah! ohimè, non reggo a tanta ambascia!"). Il personaggio non può che pregare ("Madre, pietosa Vergine!"): il colore elegiaco e disperato, la tornitura carnosa, la forza del legato, le grandi frasi che si gonfiano a vela ("Deh! non m'abbandonar...") morbide di dolore, guidate e richiuse con senso infallibile.
Il duetto col Padre Guardiano ha la vertigine degli spazi manzoniani. L'attacco di Leonora ("Allegro agitato") rovescia l'impeto e l'affanno di un rimorso dilatato all'universale ("Infelice, delusa, rejetta, / dalla terra e dal ciel maledetta/"); la solennità musicalissima di Siepi è un ponte verso il cielo ("Venite fidente alla croce"). La forza dei due artisti scatena una tensione di volontà che pare insanabile, e Leyla Gencer si scaglia con aggressività disperata nell'implorazione, martellando il fraseggio crudo ("Se voi scacciate questa pentita, "") Ancora sullo scontro-incontro di due interpreti grandiosi, nasce il capovolgimento estremo, la decisione irrinunciabile di Leonora. La voce s'illumina a raggio di sole, a ripetere più mosso, il cantabile del Frate ("Tua grazia, o Dio,/ sorride alla rejetta!").
Anche rispetto al personaggio-Coro l'emozione della cantante è contagiosa: la voce si fa mistica e il colore del Coro della Scala più raccolto, trepido d'affettuosa pietà mentre lei, a sua volta attratta, trascolora in eco della mezzavoce.
Ancora in un altro esempio riconosciamo l'impatto dei cantanti e il segno Gencer: nel Terzetto finale, dove "Andante sostenuto" annoda le tre voci col soprano al vertice. È il senso del morire con dolcezza, che è della Gencer interprete, e un po' le viene dall'Oriente. Si comunica dal suo canto aereo e intenso, purificato dalla fatale, ingiusta, vendetta, e capace ormai di redimere. Si comunica a Siepi che vigila sul miracolo; si comunica a Di Stefano che lo vive nelle dolcissime parole a fior di labbra ("Leonora, io son redento,"). Il soprano è con loro e guarda oltre: il suo "Cantabile" può promettere con dolcezza ("Lieta poss'io precederti") e intanto anche ricordare con accento ammorbidito ("santo l'amor sarà."), con pause e colori limpidamente impalpabili, quell'amore contrastato dal destino che aveva stretto nelle tempeste della sua grande aria ("Pace, pace, mio Dio").
 
LA FORZA DEL DESTINO
 
Cologne, July 1957. La Scala, on tour with orchestra, chorus and its finest singers, was celebrating the re- opening of the Buhnen der Stadt theatre, with two operas: "La Sonnambula" with Maria Callas, in the Luchino Visconti/Piero Tosi version, and "La Forza del Destino" with Leyla Gencer, Giuseppe Di Stefano and Cesare Siepi, both operas being conducted by Antonino Votto.
Who exactly was Leyla Gencer at La Scala in 1957? She had made her debut the previous year in Poulenc's "Carmelite Vespers", but despite her youth De Sabata chose her to sing in the Duomo at Toscanini's funeral on the 18th February 1957; in May she recorded a historic version of "Il Trovatore" for RAI; in June she sang "La Traviata" in Vienna under Karajan; in July came "La Forza del Destino" with La Scala in Cologne. The two performances on the 5th and 7th July were a triumph, with as many as twenty curtain calls.
The performance is typical 1950s La Scala; Antonino Votto, who was an ideal opera conductor with a profound understanding of Verdi, made brilliant use of his singers and brought new balance to the opera via a detachment that was both his creed and his stylistic identity. Giuseppe Di Stefano, a regular at La Scala, possessed a voice that was brilliant even in sorrow, an immediacy of communication and a boldness, and was as generous, seductive and open as the soul of the character he was interpreting. The bass, Cesare Siepi, was of aristocratic stature; unforgettable as both Don Giovanni and Padre Guardiano, he was famous for his "legato", for the power that transformed into prayer the quivering voice of humanity, paternal in his understanding. The baritone, Aldo Protti, was a perfect Verdian both vocally and intellectually. The mezzosoprano, Gabriella Carturan, was animated by a dark energy. Enrico Campi brought new clarity to Melitone. The youthful protagonist revealed the force of her vocation in the rarified world of Verdi, in her own secret, intimate and magnetic way.
The character she depicts is lyrical and proud, ardent and tense, with the true innocent genius of the unlucky. Her voice is lyrical, dark, voluptuous in its harmony and colour. She attacks the phrasing with natural and decisive musicality, working on it and refining it into poetry. She has understood that the key to this woman lies in the catalytic relationship between emotional power and musical gesture. The way she identifies herself, the way she reacts, in an unstoppable rhythm, is the hallmark of her Leonora di Vergas. This is a character twisted by contradictions and omens, by all that the world's greatest theatre can call upon in the name of tragedy, in its effort to comprehend what is more than merely human. Gencer wastes no time; in the first act, she immediately discards the romantic conventions of the traditional interpretation, creating sparks. She is no longer a melancholy girl, but a heroine driven to extremes, turning the final phrase of the opening recitative into a convulsion of agony, heavy with foreboding, revealing the dramatic sense of the "pianissimo" on the "G" ("Ahi troppo!... troppo sventurata sono!"). The aria, which, given its beginning, could sound like a lament, ("Me pellegrina ed orfana") becomes a passionate selfconfession, with the "crescendo" and "accellerando" on a dotted rhythm ("Colmo di tristi immagini"). She agonises over herself: the lyric phrase of parting is born of her pain ("Ti lascio, ohimè, con lagrime / dolce mia terra! Addio"): there is sheer genius in the way she delays the final gesture of salutation, the way her breath control on key words syncopates the emotion, the emphasis of the tears, the fluidity of the words "terra! Addio." Di Stefano enters from the balcony, with Alvaro's bewitching theme, his voice unmistakably luminous and electrifying. Despite the turbulence and the perplexities of the libretto, these two great singers immediately succeed in creating an overwhelming sense of unity, of being on the same wavelength. When Alvaro's impulsiveness almost succeeds in making her forget her promise, Leonora, in a courageous and passionate attack, forestalls him: "Son tua, son tua col core, tua col core e colla vita", immersing herself in the rhythm of the wonderfully fluid, tender and intimate duet: "Ah! seguirti fino agli ultimi / confini della terra...".
Whilst we in the Convent scene move beyond passion, Leonora continues stubbornly to suffer. From the recitative, in which every word echoes with the dread of tragedy, Leonora wavers between the abysses of destiny; her centralising individualism has a hyperbolic finality ("quella notte in cui/io, del sangue di mi padre intrisa,/ l'ho seguito e il perdei!") The intimacy of her bewilderment is beautifully and naturally expressed in the sweet desperation of the repeated consonants ("Ed or mi lascia, / mi lascia. Mi sfugge!) before the powerful A natural, which then immerses itself in the following "piano" (Ah! ohimè, non reggo a tanta ambascia!"). All she can do is pray ("Madre, pietosa Vergine!"), imbuing her song with desperate and tragic colour, with fine substance, with power, the central phrases swelling ("Deh! non m'abbandonar... "), impregnated with pain, emitted and then silenced with infallible mastery.
Her duet with Padre Guardiano is of almost Manzonian dimensions. Leonora's entrance ("Allegro agitato") is propelled by the impetus and the anguish of a remorse grown to almost universal size ("Infelice, delusa, rejetta, / dalla terra e dal ciel maledetta"): Siepi's solemnity and incredible musicality open the road to Heaven ("Venite fidente alla croce"). The strength of the two artists unleashes a battle of wills that appears unresolvable, and Leyla Gencer implores with aggressive desperation, emphasising the crude phrasing ("Se voi scacciate questa pentita, ""). And it is from this conflict/encounter between two great performers that the opera's turning-point is born: Leonora's irrevocable decision. Her voice is illuminated with the sun, as she softly repeats the father’s words ("Tua grazia, o Dio, / sorride alla rejetta!")
This emotion infects the chorus; as her voice becomes more mystical, so the La Scala chorus becomes more intense, trembling with loving pity whilst she, in her turn, softly echoes.
The finale Terzetto, in which all three voices, with the soprano at the climax, intertwine in the "Andante sostenuto" is yet another example of the force of these singers, in particular Gencer. She has the ability as a performer to convey an impression of dying softly, an almost Oriental skill. We feel it in the airy intensity of her voice, purified by the unjust, doom-laden vendetta, and thus capable of redemption. Siepi, overseer of this miracle, receives the message; so does Di Stefano, who sees it in the sweet words that tremble on her lips ("Leonora, io son redento,"). Gencer is both with them and beyond them; in her voice is both sweet promise ("Lieta poss'io precederti") and the soft accents of memory ("santo l'amor sarà"), which, with pauses and clear, intangible colours recalls that love marked by destiny that she had encapsulates in the waves of her great aria ("Pace, pace, mio Dio"). 
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