Customer Reviews

Verdi: La Forza del Destino / Ziino (1961)

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I must admit that my main reason for purchasing this set was a certain partiality for Signor Labò, who sings the role of Don Alvaro here. Way back at the end of Nov. 1957, as a 12-year-old opera enthusiast, I just happened to be present when he made his debut at New York's Met, in this very same opera and role. As I remember, he more than held his own with older superstars Zinka Milanov and Leonard Warren, who sang with him that night, and I was sure at the time that he'd just taken his first step toward a very distinguished singing career. What a shame that that didn't happen! To my knowledge, he made only one complete commercial recording (as Don Carlo in Verdi's opera of that name), and the loss is ours!

The present recording is of a live performance that took place in Italy almost four years later. I have no fault to find with the singing, but the sound is nothing if not substandard. Stereo was still a novelty at the time, so it was recorded monaurally, and when the orchestra plays fortissimo, it sounds boxed-in and damped. At times, as the artists move about on the stage, their voices grow louder or softer as they approach or recede from the microphone. This is typical of older recordings I have heard of live performances, so if one is interested primarily in the artist(s) performing, then one must "suffer" for it. There are good performances here by Piero Cappuccili (as THIS Don Carlo) and Fiorenza Cossotta (as Preziosilla). Both of them made quite a few complete opera recordings in later years, so they are well represented.

Aside from that, my main complaint about this recording is the cuts. The most glaring of these is in Act III: when Carlo realizes who Alvaro really is and rejoices at the fact that he has survived his battle wounds so that he, Carlo, can kill him himself, the performance goes right to the camp-follower sequence (itself incomplete), and omits altogether the confrontation and first duel between the two antagonists. So one is left to wonder why it takes Carlo five years to get around to following through on his plan, in the final act. But one must remember that this is a live production, and this particular cut was all but standard. The days when recording studios would bring out opera recordings with all the cuts restored, was still some time in the future.

All in all, if one can tolerate the inferior sound and doesn't mind the omitted music, this set would be a good value for one's money. Not perfect, but with a lot in it to enjoy.