Royal Opera House; Barbican; Wigmore Hall, London
Ignore the fanciful plot and submit to the musical glories of the Royal Opera’s bravura revival of unwieldy Verdi. And to the top of the mountain with Vladimir Jurowski and co

Midnight strikes. Your lover enters through a window, ready to carry you off on a horse. Joy. He calls you an angel, reminds you of his Inca blood, and before you know where you are he’s soaring up to a top B flat (he is a tenor). Now – fatal mistake – your lover has killed your father. Disaster. Vengeance, bloodshed. Verdi’s La forza del destino (1862), of which the events described are only the start, is sometimes described as the composer’s most Shakespearean opera in its mix of high and low, brief comedy and tragedy. The comparison is less than helpful. Shakespeare would have filleted some of the more far-fetched plot coincidences, of which there are many, but that is another discussion.

Christof Loy’s production of La forza , new at the Royal Opera House in 2019, has now been revived in all its teeming and lopsided glory, conducted with wise insight and propulsion by Mark Elder. Presaging the new ambitions of Verdi’s late works, this four-act drama demands the utmost of soloists, chorus and orchestra. It’s excitingly cast here, with terrific choral singing and acting. The production slides around visually but lands, more or less, on a world of mid-20th-century Italian cinema, steeped in handsome religiosity and glittery tat (designed by Christian Schmidt, lighting designer Olaf Winter). Three dumbshows foreshadow the action. People writhe – who can say why – on the dining table. Muleteers and prostitutes bowl in, a touch of Weimar in their apparel. A wholly coherent production is all but impossible with this work. Musically, it thrills.