Customer Reviews

La Forza del Destino [Blu-ray]

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The Good?
This is one Verdi opera wherein the conductor plays a huge big role. Zubin Mehta leading the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in a beautifully balanced display of nuance and orchestral color. An excellent audio recording and editing team has enhanced the effect of all this, including that of the singers.

A rather good batch of singers (Violeta Urmana, Marcello Giordani, Carlo Guelfi) give what I would term as a very uninspired performance, although, visually, they hardly match the characters they are supposed to be playing. That happens all the time. True, this Opera is perhaps the least performed of the Verdi greats, and has probably one of the most unlikely and rather boring plots too. So it would take something extra from the singers to make it a little more exciting - something that these singers just could not do.

The Video is as good as a blu ray shot mostly in softer if not dark backgrounds and lighting can be. Kudos.

My father used to play La Forza and other operas like Nabucco, Flying Dutchmen etc. on Sunday afternoons.
La Forza was one time too often for me and I haven't listened to it for about 45 years.
When I saw this Blu Ray, I thought I give it another try. I have heard Scandiuzzi on James Levine's 25th Met anniversary, Marcello Giordani in a Butterfly production and Carlo Guelfi in Pagliacci and I liked their voices. I am somewhat neutral on Violeta Urmana and I can't compare this production to anything else currently on the market.
It is a traditional production and video is fine. Most shots show the principal singers in the middle of the screen with little acting. There is a dance scene in the 3rd act and that's when the video direction falls into MTV habits with cuts every 1.5 seconds and you can't see much of the dancers.
Sound is DTS-HD MA 7.1 (or PCM stereo). The soundstage is about the width between the front speakers with little use of the surround speakers. Orchestra and chorus are well recorded, I just wished for a broader sound stage. The principal voices come mainly through the center speaker. I prefer them to move across the stage as the singers move across. But as most shots show the singers in the middle of the screen, it's somewhat logical to have the sound come from the middle, too. But it doesn't give you the impression of dimension.
EDIT: About 1 hour 52 min. into the performance, the voices are suddenly in line with the position of the singers on stage and not through the center alone anymore. It sounds more realistic that way to me. Hard to tell why it wasn't done like that from the start. END EDIT
Most of the time sound between singers, orchestra and chorus is balanced and the orchestra rarely overpowers.
Considering other recordings I have, I can call this one only good due to the lackluster use of the surround channels and sending the voices simply to the center. PCM stereo gives even less the impression of being there.
May be not surprising, nobody claims credit for being the sound engineer.