Welsh National Opera presents a feast of Italian operas from three of the greatest composers for its spring season in Milton Keynes
The season, entitled Rabble Rousers, will feature a new production of Verdi’s La forza del destino alongside revivals of Puccini’s Tosca and Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
The season opens with La forza del destino (April 7) directed by WNO Artistic Director David Pountney and conducted by WNO Conductor Laureate Carlo Rizzi in a personal debut for the Maestro this season. The well-known overture sets the scene for this dramatic opera full of twists and turns that sees the heroine Leonora torn between her lover Don Alvaro and allegiance to her family.
Carlo Rizzi says: “Forza is the only major Italian opera that I have not conducted but is one of the first ones that I heard in my life, so my thoughts on this masterpiece span more than thirty years. To bring my ideas together with David, a wonderful cast of singers and the great ensembles of WNO's Chorus and Orchestra make it all the more exciting for me that I am finally performing this masterpiece. I hope that audiences of all ages will join us for the beautiful and dramatic music that Verdi has written - not just the well known overture, but all the glorious arias and choruses in this opera that drive its very compelling story forward.”
Romance and tragedy are on the menu for WNO’s revival of its production of Tosca (April 4 & 6) in this thrilling story of love, lust, murder and corruption which has become one of the best-loved operas. Featuring beautiful arias including Floria Tosca’s ‘Vissi d’arte’, the story is punctuated with twists and turns from start to its gripping finish. Conducting of Tosca in Milton Keynes will be shared by Tête à Tête Music Director Timothy Burke (4 April) and Carlo Rizzi (6 April).
The main scale season concludes with the revival of John Caird’s 2011 staging of Don Giovanni (April 5), with design by John Napier. Based on the tale of Don Juan, Don Giovanni follows the demise of opera’s legendary seducer as his rogueish womanising catches up with him and he meets his end through a force from beyond the grave. One of the most popular and much-performed operas, this has everything from murder to lust to comedy, drama and the supernatural. Don Giovanni will be revived by Caroline Chaney, with James Southall conducting.
Talking about the season, David Pountney says: “As you might expect, a season of Rabble Rousers contains a lot of demonstrably noisy people – Preziosilla banging her drum for war, Don Giovanni leading a paean to “La Liberta” and Cavaradossi bursting into vocal flames at the news of Napoleon’s victory at Marengo. The three operas of our spring season bristle with rule breakers, revolutionaries and the enemies of convention – people of unbridled passion whose characters spring out so readily from the pages of an operatic score.
“Our new production of the season, La forza del destino, straddles conflicting worlds very much in the manner of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” - possibly not an accidental reference as it was written for St. Petersburg. It begins with an attempted elopement and an accidental murder, and these events set in train a relentless quest for forgiveness and revenge respectively which crosses a violent and unstable world torn apart by war.
"It always surprises me when people complain that the plot of Forza is disjointed, untidy. Lives lived in the midst of war and terror are seldom tidy, predictable or even rational. This is a world of extremes explored with epic dramatic vision by Verdi, who is branching out at this point in his career into increasingly radical and original dramatic structures.
"It sets the tone for a season unashamedly dedicated to the wilder side of life.”
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