The plot of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino notoriously revolves around a catastrophic accident. Don Alvaro, about to elope with Leonora, throws his pistol to the floor when confronted by her father, the Marquis of Calatrava, causing it to fire and fatally wound the old man. Alvaro and Leonora are then pursued remorselessly by Leonora’s brother, Carlo, hell-bent on vengeance to restore family honour.
But what can seem like a stereotypically operatic device is transformed by Christof Loy’s incisive, in places startlingly updated, 2019 production into something deeper, darker and even more revealing about the society we live in.
