Reimagining Verdi’s great tragedy of guilt, obsession and the implacable nature of fate in terms of 20th century military conflict and its aftermath, Christof Loy’s 2019 staging of La Forza del Destino returns to Covent Garden for its first revival, overseen by Loy’s associate director, Georg Zlabinger, and conducted by Mark Elder. There have been a few changes of emphasis in accommodating its new cast, and a few of its rougher edges have been smoothed out.
Padre Guardiano (Evgeny Stavinsky) is now a charismatically zealous young priest rather than the more traditional mature abbot (played by Ferruccio Furlanetto when the staging was new). Loy’s use of film to replay the traumatic past events that colour present lives strikes me as more cogently integrated than before, and the big dance routines, reworked by Klevis Elmazaj and reminiscent of Oh, What a Lovely War!, are more slickly and sexily done. It remains, however, unsteadily poised between psychological realism and the stylisation of cabaret or revue.
