The Force of Destiny, Coliseum, theatre review: Calixto Bieito's perverse production is saved by brilliant singing

I’ve seldom heard the ENO orchestra sound so thrilling

(ENO / Robert Workman)

Verdi’s revenge opera uses a huge canvas but turns on a fatal triangle: Don Alvaro has accidentally killed the father of his beloved Leonora, who takes refuge in a monastery; her brother Don Carlo pursues Alvaro to the grave. The motivations are quintessentially youthful: Calixto Bieito doesn’t help his new production’s credibility by making these characters look and act irredeemably middle-aged.

Nor does he help the opera by disfiguring it with an obsessive vein of gratuitous sadism. Moreover, apart from two chillingly effective crowd scenes – one evoking the Spanish Civil War, the other Syria today - his direction is old-fashioned and wooden, with stand-and-deliver performances contrasting awkwardly with the busy back-projections and the surreal, angular sets (which don’t always work).

Matthew Best, Tamara Wilson, Clare Presland, Gwyn Hughes Jones in The Force of Destiny (ENO / Robert Workman)

So why four stars? Because musically this show is stunning. Gwyn Hughes Jones’s elegantly-sung Alvaro is complemented by Anthony Michaels-Moore’s resonant and brilliantly-conceived Carlo, while James Creswell’s commanding Father Superior plays off Andrew Shore’s vividly characterised Friar Melitone. And in the American soprano Tamara Wilson as Leonora, ENO have struck gold: I can’t remember when this auditorium last resounded to a major Verdi role sung with such majestic beauty. Wilson has the power to ride effortlessly over the chorus singing fortissimo, and the artistry to create sublime magic with her harp-accompanied closing aria. And I’ve seldom heard the ENO orchestra sound so thrilling: under Mark Wigglesworth’s inspired direction, it rose to all the challenges of this wonderful score.