Verdi’s opera ‘Forza del Destino’ gets its first new production at the Met in nearly 30 years

NEW YORK —

When the Metropolitan Opera last revived Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino,” a reviewer bemoaned its “four soul-numbing hours of ludicrous plot twists.”

That’s harsh. But there’s no question the libretto of this musically glorious, sprawling work does pose challenges unique among Verdi’s later operas.

For one thing, the action is spread over many years and jumps back and forth between two countries to locations that include a mansion, an inn, a monastery and a battlefield. All the while, the main characters keep running into each other in circumstances that defy credulity.

But Mariusz Treliński thinks he has found a way to make sense of it all.

“If you analyze it, you discover the element that ties the whole story together,” said the Polish filmmaker-turned-opera director who is overseeing the Met’s first new production of “Forza” in 28 years.

That unifying element, Treliński said, is “patriarchy, and the fact that when you kill the father it destroys not just the children but the entire social order.”

His “Forza” opens on Feb. 26 with a cast that includes soprano Lise Davidsen as Leonora, tenor Brian Jagde as Don Alvaro, baritone Igor Golovatenko as Don Carlo, and bass-baritone Soloman Howard as both the Marquis de Calatrava and Padre Guardiano. Met music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts. The March 9 matinee will be broadcast to movie theaters live in HD.

Like many directors these days, Treliński doesn’t hesitate to update an opera if he thinks it tells the story better for modern audiences.

So instead of 18th century Spain and Italy, the setting is now contemporary. Verdi’s Marquis, father to the heroine Leonora and her brother Carlo, becomes…