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 Katonah, NY – The twelfth Bel Canto at Caramoor season – an annual operatic exploration that Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times calls “an essential contribution” – concludes with Verdi’s La Forza del Destino in its rarely-heard original version, composed for the Imperial Theatre of St. Petersburg at the height of Verdi’s career.
La Forza del Destino will be performed in concert in Caramoor’s acoustically superb Venetian Theater on Saturday, July 26 at 8:00pm in a new critical edition, sung for the first time in America, supervised by Philip Gossett, who will also give a public lecture introducing the opera. Will Crutchfield will conduct the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.
There will be afternoon and evening lectures and recitals for ticketholders prior to the performance.
TICKETS AND THE CARAMOOR CARAVAN
Tickets for La Forza del Destino are $20.00, $35.00, $50.00, $65.00 and $80.00 and may be ordered by calling the Box Office at 914.232.1252 or online.
The Caramoor Caravan, a luxurious, air-conditioned coach, is available to bring audience members from Manhattan to Bel Canto at Caramoor opera performances. Round trip service is $25.00. Call the Caramoor Box Office at 914.232.1252 or www.caramoor.org for schedule details or to order tickets.
Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts is located at 149 Girdle Ridge Road, Katonah, New York.
DEBUTS AND RETURNS
Five principal artists make their Caramoor debuts in La Forza. Soprano Takesha Meshé Kizart, winner of Parma’s prestigious “Verdi Voices” competition in 2006 and fresh from a triumph as Tosca in her Dallas Opera debut, sings Leonora. Emmanuel di Villarosa, noted for his performances of the usual version of the opera in German theaters and who recently performed a run of Lucia di Lammermoor with Will Crutchfield in Warsaw, takes on the challenge of Don Alvaro in the more extensive role Verdi originally composed for the tenor voice. Zurab Ninua, a 2007 alumnus of the Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists program (and since then engaged by the Metropolitan Opera to cover a leading role in War and Peace) sings Don Carlo. Mezzo-soprano Kirstin Chavez, noted for her interpretation of Carmen around the world, gives her first performance of another gypsy girl, Preziosilla. Finally, Polish basso Daniel Borowski sings the Padre Guardiano.
The sixth principal role, one of Verdi’s most original creations, is the cynical friar Melitone, sung by returning Neapolitan baritone Marco Nistico. Crutchfield notes, “Verdi made his own unique distillation of opera buffa in this part, and you can hear echoes of Il Barbiere di Siviglia all the way through it.” He had a particular artist in mind: Achille de Bassini who, almost twenty years earlier, had created the tragic Doge of Venice in I Due Foscari and in whom Verdi saw an unsuspected comic talent. “I am especially glad to welcome Marco Nistico back for Melitone,” said Crutchfield, “not only because his sense of humor will find its way onto our stage for the first time, but also because he has just had a big success in De Bassini’s other great role, Francesco Foscari, with Sarasota Opera.”
THE OPERAS
La Forza del Destino is the fourth Verdi work presented by Bel Canto at Caramoor. The composer’s version of Otello was performed in 2001 and path-breaking period-style reinterpretations of La Traviata and Il Trovatore were offered in 2005 and 2007.
La Forza del Destino, the widest-ranging and most ambitious opera Verdi had yet composed, was first performed in 1862 in St. Petersburg under the composer’s supervision. Seven years later, dissatisfied with its progress through the world’s theaters, he made several radical revisions and re-launched the opera at Milan’s La Scala. Even then, La Forza did not join Verdi’s hit parade. That had to wait for the 20th century, when a renewed appreciation of the great Italian master brought many of his lesser-known and more difficult works into the standard repertory. The opera is now a classic, with a rich performance history in New York and elsewhere, but few opera-goers have had the chance to learn that both versions of La Forza del Destino are magnificent operas. Professor Gossett’s recent research, meanwhile, has opened still further windows on this score. Materials preserved, but long unexamined, in St. Petersburg give us “more documentation of Verdi’s creative process than we have for any other opera,” according to Gossett.
The biggest single difference between the familiar Forza and the original concerns the denouement. The opera is based on a celebrated play by the Duke of Rivas, who also wrote the source-play for Il Trovatore, and, in his first version of the opera, Verdi followed Rivas in allowing the titular “Force of Destiny” to reach its inexorable conclusion with the deaths of all three of the protagonists that Destiny has doomed as its victims.
In 1869, Verdi softened the ending, allowing the tenor to survive and ending the opera on a note of religious consolation. The final trio he added to the score is a glorious piece of music, and so the revised version of La Forza will always need to be performed, but at the same time, many people have felt that it is a sprawling opera, and that it lacks the taut cohesion we know in other Verdi works. Crutchfield, explaining the choice of the original version, suggested that “this aspect, the sense of through-line and inevitability, may be stronger in the St. Petersburg score.” There, the dying heroine makes the opera’s theme explicit: Vedi destino: io moro (Behold Fate: I am dying). Don Alvaro, whose love for Leonora has unwittingly brought about the destruction of her entire family, completes the circle: declaring himself an emissary of the damned, he throws himself from a cliff, and the opera ends with the cathartic bleakness that Verdi knew so well how to portray.
The St. Petersburg Forza holds other surprises as well: a major tenor aria that Verdi removed (perhaps because of its extreme difficulty), a different song for the gypsy Preziosilla, and several smaller passages throughout the score. “Verdi,” said Crutchfield, “is on the very short list of composers whose every mature page is worth hearing. The first Forza finds him closer to the world of Ballo, Simon Boccanegra and Traviata; the familiar version finds him closer to the world of Don Carlos and Aida. And since both of those are wonderful worlds, it is extremely rewarding to hear how he imagined La Forza del Destino when it was new.”
SPECIAL PRE-OPERA EVENTS FOR TICKET-HOLDERS
One revelation of Philip Gossett’s Russian research will be highlighted in Caramoor’s popular series of pre-opera lectures and recitals. It turns out that Verdi prepared not two versions of La Forza, but three. It had long been known that he went to St. Petersburg in 1861 and began rehearsals there, only to be forced to abandon them and return the following year when the prima donna took ill and no acceptable substitute could be brought to the remote Russian capital in time. What was not known before is that the complete 1861 score can be reconstructed from rehearsal materials preserved in the theater’s archives and that it contains still further music, unknown even from the published 1862 version. Professor Gossett will present excerpts from this “pre-first” Forza, sung by members of the Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists ensemble, and explain the history of the opera’s gestation, the adventure of its reconstruction, and the insights it provides into Verdi’s maturing genius in an afternoon lecture-recital. The full list of afternoon and evening pre-opera events on Saturday, July 26 is listed below:
3:30 p.m. Verdi’s Workshop
La Forza del Destino is perhaps Verdi’s most ambitious opera and it is also the one for which we have the most documentation of his compositional process. The world knows two versions (St. Petersburg 1862, performed at Caramoor, and Milan 1869, the familiar score), but in fact there is an earlier one still, prepared by Verdi in 1861 before a singer’s illness forced a year’s postponement of the premiere, and reconstructed only in the 21st century. Philip Gossett takes the audience on a journey through Verdi’s encounters with the Force of Destiny, with fascinating music “from the cutting-room floor” performed by the Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists.
4:30 p.m. The Force of Destiny and the Destiny of Russian Opera
Verdi was not the first major Italian composer to write for St. Petersburg but rather the last. His intervention came at a moment of ferment and radical progress for Russian opera; more than one observer has noted that without La Forza, Boris Godunov would have been impossible. This recital by the Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists with Rachelle Jonck weaves together earlier Italian music for the Russian capital with the developing responses of native composers.
5:30 p.m. Dinner Break
7:00 p.m. Philip Gossett introduces La Forza del Destino
A DIVO AMONG SCHOLARS
Philip Gossett is the world’s most renowned scholar of Italian opera and the General Editor of the ongoing critical editions of Verdi’s work as well as Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, which opened the Bel Canto at Caramoor season on July 12. Professor Gossett is the recipient of innumerable awards and honors, prominently including the Italian Government’s highest civilian honor (Cavaliere della Gran Croce) and a recent $1.5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation in support of his operatic work. Besides supervising the two massive critical editions, he is the volume editor for many individual operas (including La Forza) and is the author of the long-awaited book Divas and Scholars, which, in its turn, has garnered major prizes including the American Musicological Society’s Kinkeldey Award.
In announcing Professor Gossett’s participation in the 2008 season, Caramoor’s Opera Director Will Crutchfield said that “Philip Gossett has been one of my heroes since I was a teenager first learning this magnificent repertory and he is a hero to everyone who cares about Italian opera. It has been my great privilege to argue with him for at least 20 years and to learn from him for even longer. I am thrilled that we have the opportunity to bring his insights to our Young Artists and our public in a sustained way this year and to have his direct help in preparing performances based on the meticulous editions he has supervised.”
ABOUT BEL CANTO AT CARAMOOR
The Bel Canto at Caramoor program began in 1997 with Rossini's La Donna del Lago, starring Vivica Genaux, Marguerite Krull, Bruce Fowler and Matthew Chellis. At its inception, diva Marilyn Horne predicted success: "These singers are very lucky to have Will Crutchfield," she told the press before the summer festival. The New York Times chief critic Anthony Tommasini quickly agreed, praising "a palpable conviction that Rossini's serious operas are not static vehicles for elaborate vocal display, but elegant and humane musical dramas" in his review of the opening. Writing in The Wall Street Journal in 1997, Heidi Waleson reported "Mr. Crutchfield brought his sure sense of Bel Canto style to bear upon Lucrezia Borgia and the semi-staged concert version at Caramoor's Venetian Theater was both delightful and thought-provoking...its dark (yes, Verdian) intensity is certainly a revelation." Martin Bernheimer in the Financial Times added his praise following 1999's Gazza Ladra, lauding the virtuosic young cast and hailing Crutchfield's style as "a fine balance of bravado, intensity, sensitivity and scholarly savoir-faire."
Ever since, growing ranks of critics from the national and international press have maintained that consensus, and capacity audiences have filled Caramoor's 1700-seat Venetian Theater. The flagship summer productions have included three operas each by Bellini and Rossini, three each by Donizetti and Verdi, and individual works by Handel, Gluck, Francesco Conti, and Pauline Viardot, along with a wide range of concerts.
Meanwhile a broad repertory has been performed with young artists in the intimate Music Room theater, ranging from a cycle of the Mozart and Da Ponte operas to Verdi's early comedy Un Giorno di Regno. The prominent young singers tapped early by Caramoor and Crutchfield are too numerous to name, but a few of them include – besides the artists already mentioned – Maria Zifchak, Indra Thomas, Frank Porretta, Kate Aldrich, Daniel Mobbs, Kenneth Tarver, Nancy Fabiola Herrera, Krisztina Szabo, Yeghishe Manucharyan, John Osborn and Alexandra Deshorties. Established artists like Ewa Podleś, June Anderson, and Sumi Jo have been added to the mix after Crutchfield worked with them in other theaters, and a young artists program added in 1999 has since grown into the Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists, a prestigious full-scale training program that has touched the lives of dozens of singers. Mr. Tommasini in the Times has called the series "essential," and eleven seasons of achievement show why: Caramoor is now recognized as a major international center for the interpretation of this important repertory and the development of the singers it requires.
ABOUT CARAMOOR
Caramoor is the legacy of Walter and Lucie Rosen, who built the great house and filled it with their treasures. Walter Rosen was the master planner for the Caramoor estate, bringing to reality his dream of creating a place to entertain friends from around the world. Their musical evenings were the seeds of today’s International Music Festival. Realizing the pleasure their friends took in the beauty of Caramoor – the house with its art collection, the gardens, and the musical programs on summer evenings – in 1946 the Rosens established a public charity to open Caramoor to the community.
Lucie Rosen survived her husband by seventeen years. During those years, she expanded the Music Festival: the Spanish Courtyard was used as a setting for musical events, as it is today, and, under her direction, the great stage of the Venetian Theater was built.
Caramoor is a Garden of Great Music. “We invite people to come early, explore our beautiful grounds, take a tour of the House Museum, visit our gift shop, enjoy a pre-concert picnic, and discover beautiful music in a relaxed setting,” advises Paul Rosenblum, Caramoor’s Managing Director. With its unique heritage, Caramoor remains a place where magical summer days and nights are shared and enjoyed by thousands. “Caramoor is the loveliest Festival of them all.” - The New York Times
Art and Gardens
Concerts take place in two outdoor theaters: the large, acoustically superb Venetian Theater and the more intimate, romantic Spanish Courtyard. Caramoor is more than just music – there is beauty at every turn. The House Museum, the former summer home of Caramoor’s founders, Lucie and Walter Rosen, contains a vast collection of Renaissance, 18th-century, and Eastern art objects, including furniture, tapestries, sculpture, paintings, textiles, porcelain, and jade in twenty rooms that are open to the public. There are entire rooms that were imported from European palaces and villas. In fact, Caramoor is one of just five mansions in the country that incorporate entire rooms into its collection. On Thursdays and Fridays, afternoon tea is served in the Summer Dining Room, overlooking the charming Spanish Courtyard.
Caramoor’s gardens are also well worth the visit and include nine unique perennial gardens. Among them are a Sense Circle for the visually handicapped, a Butterfly Garden, Tapestry Hedge, and an Iris and Peony Garden, which may be enjoyed on one’s own or seen on a guided tour.
Enjoy a Picnic at Caramoor
Extend your Caramoor experience by arriving for concerts early and enjoying a picnic amidst the beautiful gardens. Bring your own picnic or pre-order from Great Performances® by calling 212.337.6055.
House Museum
Guided tours of the House Museum are provided from Wednesday through Sunday, 1:00pm-4:00pm with the last tour at 3:00pm. On Saturdays, during the Festival, tours are given from 1:00pm-5:00pm, with the last tour at 4:00pm. Tickets are $10 (children 16 and under free).
GETTING TO CARAMOOR
Caramoor is easy to get to by car and mass transportation.
By car from the West Side of Manhattan and New Jersey, take the Saw Mill River Parkway north to Katonah. Exit at Route 35/Cross River. Turn right and, at the first traffic light, make a right turn onto Route 22 south. Travel 1.9 miles to the junction of Girdle Ridge Road. Follow the signs to Caramoor. (For detailed directions call 914.232.5035 and press 2, or online at www.caramoor.org). Parking at Caramoor is free.
By train, take the Harlem Division of the Metro-North Railroad to Katonah, New York. Taxi service from the station to Caramoor (five minutes away) is available.
From Manhattan, take the Caramoor Caravan to Bel Canto at Caramoor opera performance and ride comfortably in a luxurious, air-conditioned coach. Round trip service is $25.00. Call the Caramoor Box Office at 914.232.1252 or www.caramoor.org for schedule details or to order tickets.
Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts is located at 149 Girdle Ridge Road, Katonah, New York.
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