Metropolitan Opera Broadcast: La Forza del Destino 

THE CAST (in order of vocal appearance) Marquis     bass, MALCOLM SMITH Leonora     soprano, LEONTYNE PRICE Curra     mezzo, CARLOTTA ORDASSY Don Alvaro     tenor, PLÁCIDO DOMINGO Alcade     bass, ANDRIJ DOBRIANSKY Don Carlo     baritone, CORNELL MACNEIL Trabuco     tenor, ANDREA VELIS Preziosilla     mezzo, ROSALIND ELIAS Fra Melitone     bar., RENATO CAPECCHI Padre Guardiano     bass, MARTTI TALVELA Surgeon     bar., ROBERT GOODLOE Conducted by JAMES LEVINE The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra The Metropolitan Opera Chorus 1952–53 production revised 1975:      John Dexter Set designer: Eugene Berman Costume designer: Peter J. Hall Associate designer: David Reppa Assistant stage director: David Sell Choreography: Norbert Vesak Chorus master: David Stivender Musical preparation: Alberta Masiello

THE SCENES    Timings (ET)   (Spain and Italy, mid-18th c.)    ACT I Marquis's palace 1:00– ACT II   –2:29      Sc. 1 An inn at Hornachuelos        Sc. 2 Madonna degli Angeli church   ACT III Italy 2:49–4:33      Sc. 1 A battlefield        Sc. 2 The same, later        Sc. 3 The soldiers' camp   ACT IV Spain        Sc. 1 Madonna degli Angeli cloister        Sc. 2 Valley near the cloister   Host: Margaret Juntwait Commentator: Ira Siff Music producer: Jay David Saks Producers: Mary Jo Heath, Ellen Keel,      William Berger Executive producers: Mia Bongiovanni,      Elena Park This performance is also being broadcast live      on Metropolitan Opera Radio on SiriusXM      channel 74.

Verdi's Forza del Destino, which had its world premiere in St. Petersburg in 1862, arrived at the Metropolitan Opera in 1918, in a production that would serve the company until the mid-1940s. The Met did not mount its second Forza production until 1952, when Herbert Graf directed a staging, designed by Eugene Berman, that featured several cuts and re-arrangements: the Inn at Hornachuelos scene was omitted, and the overture was used as an entr'acte between the first scene and Leonora's arrival at the monastery of Madonna degli Angeli. In 1975, the Met presented a revision of the Graf–Berman Forza, directed by John Dexter (1925–90), then the Met's director of productions, and conducted by James Levine (b. 1943), who restored the Inn scene and had the overture played in its proper place, a practice that continued in subsequent revivals.

The Met's 1977 broadcast of Forza gathered a first-rank cast under the baton of Levine, then in his first full season as the Met's music director. The Don Carlo was American baritone Cornell MacNeil (1922–2011), whose 1959 Met debut as Rigoletto began a 642-performance career with the company that lasted until 1987. Rosalind Elias (b. 1929), the broadcast's Preziosilla, made her Met debut in 1954, as Grimgerde in Die Walküre, the first of her 687 Met performances in thirty-five seasons on the roster.

Leontyne Price (b. 1927) was Leonora di Vargas, a role that the Mississippi-born soprano sang eighteen times for the company, including a 1984 Live from the Met telecast. Price, who had made her 1961 company debut as Leonora in Il Trovatore, was one of the Met's most beloved stars; her other Verdi assignments during her twenty-one Met seasons were Aida (the role of her internationally telecast "farewell to opera" in 1985), Amelia, Elvira in Ernani and the Verdi Requiem.  

Don Alvaro on the 1977 Forza broadcast was Plácido Domingo (b. 1941), who made his first appearance with the Met in 1966, in a Lewisohn Stadium concert of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci. Domingo, who sang thirteen Met performances of Forza between 1971 and 1996, delivers his first Met performances of Germont in La Traviata this month.  

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