The Force of Destiny, London Coliseum

There might be no instrumental passage in Verdi more famous: the gargantuan blow of ‘Fate’ at the start of The Force of Destiny’s overture, often excerpted for concert performance. What is rather less iconic is what follows – despite being composed at the peak of his powers, straight after Un ballo in mashera and before Aida, Otello and Falstaff, La forza del destino has never quite took off as one of his most popular works. It might have something to do with the ‘curse’, the notion that performing in the work brings bad luck; Pavarotti repeatedly refused to appear in it, while in 1960 an American baritone fell dead of a cerebral hemorrhage on stage during it.

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For the first time in over twenty years, the English National Opera are unleashing a new staging of this most passionate of works. Set during wartime, it takes many of the elements of classic drama – accidental death, illicit love, revenge and mistaken identity – and meshes them together into an unforgettably heady mix, racing towards a tragic conclusion as irresistibly fitting as it is wrenching. The music is among Verdi’s most exuberant and assorted, alternating rambunctious military marches with heaven-gazing arias.
Spanish director Calixto Bieito is no stranger to controversy; a play in Edinburgh that featured a priest masturbating over a skeleton led the Telegraph to declare it “a paradigm or parody of every that is wrong and rotten”, while a previous Verdi production at the Coliseum opened with a row of men sitting in a lavatory with their trousers around their ankles. What he will make of The Force of Destiny remains unpredictable, but there are sure to be some shocks. By updating proceedings to the Spanish Civil War, it seems likely he will play up the grim realities of violence. New ENO music director Mark Wigglesworth will conduct, while tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones, soprano Tamara Wilson and baritone Anthony Michaels-Moore will head the cast. Let us only hope the curse is kept well at bay.