By Peter McCallum
This new production by Tama Matheson has the darkness and clutter of an underlit cathedral with victims of fate peering from the shadows with blackened eye sockets, giant religious statues of doubtful taste looming oppressively and a design motif of skulls to banish any flashes of brightness in Mark Thompson's costumes.
The mood is reinforced by reviving Verdi's original ending, in which brother, sister and lover all end up dead from each other's or their own hands.
Darkness and clutter: Actors from The Force of Destiny.Credit: DANIEL MUNOZ
The Force of Destiny is among Verdi's longest operas and, in this production, the personal relationships fare well through powerful performances, particularly from Svetla Vassileva as Leonora.
The crowd scenes showing war's hollow promise and debauched reality were more mixed and the continuity less convincing. Scenes like the camp scene at the end of Act III, for example, could stand some tightening up.
Vassileva's Leonora combines a technically polished repertoire of vocal capabilities - rich, warm tones in the middle register, climactic strength at the top and breathlessly precise veiled quietness - with involving dramatic sensibility. Weighed down by an exaggerated Spanish farthingale at the start, which is symbolically discarded for male attire and then for hermit's garb at the close, she held the story's trajectory together through inner expressive focus.
Tenor Riccardo Massi as Don Alvaro, her lover, took a while to warm into the part, sounding potentially attractive but a little stretched in Act I, but progressively becoming more centred, with soaring sounds at the close. Jonathan Summers, as the vengeful brother, Don Carlo, sang with a centred and firm sound of unwavering purpose and commendable precision.
Against these three, Verdi creates a trio of alter egos. Bass Giacomo Prestia sang the confessor's role of Padre Guardiano with calm, focused presence. Preziosilla the gypsy was portrayed as an embodiment of destiny, guiding the action with invisible hand and a pack of cards, and mezzo-soprano Rinat Shaham sang the part with human colour and fiery edge.
Warwick Fyfe as Melitone added dour humour, Richard Anderson as the Marchese was pointed and convincing as the kind of father a daughter might leave, while Kanen Breen was darkly wiry as Trabuco, the peddler.
Conductor Andrea Licata understands the music's natural expressive urgency and the chorus and the orchestra produced performances of impressive stamina and strength with finely coloured detail in the clarinet and flute solos.