La forza del destino, Overture

Program notes

About the Work

La forza del destino (“The Force of Destiny”) was commissioned by the Imperial Theatre in St Petersburg and first performed there in November 1862, the only Verdi opera to receive its premiere in Russia. Its sprawling plot, taken from a Spanish play by the Duke of Rivas, follows Leonora and her lover Alvaro, whose planned elopement ends when Alvaro’s pistol goes off by accident and kills her father. From that moment fate pursues all three principal characters (Leonora, Alvaro and her vengeful brother Carlo) across Spain and Italy, through battlefields, taverns and a monastery, to a catastrophe at the end.

When Verdi revised the opera for La Scala in Milan in 1869, he replaced the original short prelude with a full-scale overture, and it is this overture that has become one of his most popular concert pieces. Verdi rarely wrote independent overtures, preferring brief preludes that lead straight into the drama; this is the grandest of the exceptions. It works almost like a symphonic poem in miniature, weaving together themes from across the opera: the “fate” motif that haunts the whole score, Leonora’s prayers for mercy, the music of Alvaro’s pleading, and the monks’ solemn chorus. It is an ideal curtain-raiser for an evening of Italian opera, and it shows off every section of a great orchestra, from the brass chords at the start to the virtuoso string writing of the fate theme.

What to Listen For

Listen first to the stark unison calls in the brass, the summons of destiny, and then to the restless, twisting theme that follows in the strings. This is the “fate” motif, and it keeps returning throughout the overture, sometimes whispered, sometimes hammered out, like a pursuer that will not give up.

Against it Verdi sets a series of lyrical melodies from the opera. Listen for the long, soaring melodies associated with Leonora’s desperate prayers for mercy and peace, and for a warm, hymn-like passage that recalls the monastery where she seeks refuge. The fate motif keeps breaking in beneath these melodies, and much of the excitement comes from the way Verdi combines them. Near the end the pace quickens, the brass takes up the melodies in a blaze of sound, and the overture races to a brilliant close.