Verdi, Overture to La forza del destino
Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) completed his opera La forza del destino (The Force of Destiny) in 1861. Its premiere in St. Petersburg was delayed a year to 1862 because of the prima donna’s illness. After it received a less enthusiastic response than Verdi hoped, he completed a revised version in 1869, such revisions by Verdi being not uncommon.
Many of the revisions were made in the overture. It begins with a three-note blast that some call the “fate motive.” From there it proceeds to a seeming hodgepodge of melodies based on the opera’s arias. But it works, partly because of Verdi’s skill as a melodist. Indeed, among all of Verdi’s operas, it stands alone as an overture that has become a standard concert piece.
Some commentators make a connection between the episodic nature of the overture and the crazy plot of the opera, which relies on a series of incredible coincidences. The three main characters, despite being separated without the ability to find one another, keep coming back together in the most unlikely ways. They go through virtually every dramatic cliché: ethnic conflict, elopement, lost love, separation, vows to enter a monastery, false and mistaken identities, military enlistment, revenge, death, and redemption.
Verdi composed the opera toward the end of his most prolific period in the 1840s and 1850s when he produced a new opera virtually every year. After La forza del destino, only four operas followed: Don Carlos (1867), Aida (1871), Otello (1887), and Falstaff (1893).