GIUSEPPE VERDI
LA FORZA DEL DESTINO: OVERTURE
INSTRUMENTATION: 2 flutes (one playing piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons. 4 French horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, 1 tuba, 2 harps, and strings.
DURATION: About 9 minutes
PROGRAM NOTES
In 1862, Giuseppe Verdi was at the zenith of his popularity, his name identified with the Risorgimento (unification of Italy) the previous year. The cry “Viva Verdi” not only hailed the composer but was also the acronym for, Vittorio Emmanuele Rè D’Italia, the new king. Verdi was elected as a member of Italy’s first parliament.
While his early and middle period operas all premiered in Italy, Verdi began to receive important commissions from beyond the borders, especially from the Paris Opera. Two singers on tour in Russia started the ball rolling for the composer’s first and only Russian commission. Based on a contemporary Spanish play, La fuerza del sino by Angel Pérez de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, this Italian melodrama—as operas were called, in Italy—fit perfectly into the cosmopolitan court of the liberal Tsar Alexander II. La forza del destino premiered in St. Petersburg in 1862. Verdi revised the entire opera, including the overture, for its Italian premiere in 1869.
As for the plot, an inexorable series of misfortunes pursues Don Alvaro and Leonora, whose father he has inadvertently shot while trying to elope with her. The lovers separate and attempt to find exculpation and inner peace, only to be hounded and finally defeated by fate. The Overture is replete with themes from the opera itself, outlining the inescapable course of the lovers’ destiny. The opening motive, three unison Es for the brasses followed by a repeated agitated figure in the low strings, represents fate and recurs each time destiny deals the lovers yet another blow. The motive, whether hovering in the background or blared out by the full orchestra, haunts each theme in Verdi’s brilliant orchestral thematic summary of this long, convoluted opera.
Program notes by:
Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn
Wordpros@mindspring.com
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