As even I was compelled to notice, there was a sporting event this past weekend which involved many of my neighbors (not to say much of the country) in passionate partisanship. I observed this so far as to take a break from working for the sake of compiling a list of epic operatic confrontations.
Sometimes La Forza del Destino seems to be little more than a string of confrontations, but Verdi saves the most intense for last, when the revenge-breathing baritone tracks down our unfortunate hero. He's out for blood, and means to have it. Alvaro begs him to be resigned to the misfortune that has pursued them both, but the baritone insults him for a good five minutes, and it all ends with vows of mutual destruction, which Corelli and Bastianini manage to make exciting and menacing despite being planted motionless and not looking at each other:
Verdi's convention of mutual insults culminating in an off-stage duel appears again at the finale of Il Trovatore's first act. The director of this Covent Garden decided to make the duel with steel coincide with the vocal one. This fits the music, but makes the singers have to worry about footwork and ripostes at the same time as some rather demanding music. (Manrico has a mullet, and the smooth-voiced Di Luna seems to be in better physical shape than his gypsy rival... does anyone know if this production was trying to invert the usual audience sympathies?)
Bizet rejected the convention of the off-stage duel in favor of knife fights, and fighting dirty, right in the middle of Carmen's third act. In my opinion, this 2009 production from La Scala has little to recommend it, but Erwin Schrott and Jonas Kaufmann singing duets and fighting with knives is an asset. I do like that Escamillo is so confident that he seems to balance between being bored by Jose, and entertained by baiting him. Is it just me, or does Kaufmann's Jose seem really skeevy, somehow?
But why should men have all the fun? Here's the scene between Eboli and Elisabetta from Don Carlo, with Bumbry and Caballe. Emotionally, this duet just goes from bad to worse. I'm sure there's no really favorable time to tell the woman whose companion and attendant you are that you've lied to her husband about her and, er, also slept with him. In the middle of the night, in his bedroom, just seems exceptionally bad.
When you're alone in a strange place, on the verge of a dangerous elopement, a strange woman interrupting your prayer with "I curse you!" is not exactly reassuring. The follow-up question, "Who are you?" being answered with "I am a shadow who pursues you, and my name is Revenge! I love the man you love!" has to be downright unnerving. Grace Bumbry and Fiorenza Cossotto have the kind of conversation you'd expect to follow from that opener:
What about bel canto, or the baroque? Perhaps due to my inferior knowledge of these branches of the operatic repertoire, no epic battles spring to mind. I comfort myself with the thought that this may be largely a question of form in the case of the baroque, where everyone certainly spends a lot of time in bravura arias singing about how they are so angry and are totally going to kill that terrible tyrant, or their fearsome rival, or the tyrant who's also a rival. Romeo and Tebaldo almost duel in Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi. Surely there must be more? Tell me what I've missed, Gentle Readers, and share your own favorites.
