Unmasked: Georgetown Gala Takes Over the Embassy of Italy
• November 7, 2013

In this “Year of Italian Culture in the U.S.,” the Citizens Association of Georgetown chose the Italian
Embassy as its fitting venue for “Venetian Carnivale: A Masked Ball” on Oct. 18, as it honored
Herb and Patrice Miller who have been instrumental to the community through the development
of Georgetown Park, the renewal of Washington Harbour and elsewhere. For the first time, the black tie event of
elegantly masked guests was followed by an after-party as deejay Adrian Loving upped the beat for
dancing until 1 a.m. Live auction items included a scavenger hunt dinner in Georgetown, Ermenegildo
Zegna suit and rare opportunity to attend the Palio di Siena famous horse race. [gallery ids="101511,151036,151041,151045,151050,151053,151058,151063,151068,151072,151033,151028,151083,151090,151086,151002,151006,151011,151014,151019,151024,151078" nav="thumbs"]

Already Here, Already Good: D.C.’s Hot Theater Tickets
•

R&J are here to stay—for a while—“Romeo
and Juliet,” under the inventive direction of
Aaron Posner with his spouse Erin Weaver as
Juliet and Michael Goldsmith as Romoe remain
at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre through
Dec. 1.

Two to catch at Signature—Christine Lahti,
who first gained attention by stealing the movie
“Swing Shift” right out from under star Goldie
Hawn back in the day, is starring in the world
premiere production of “Pride in the Falls of
Autrey Mill”, a drama about suburban secrets
by hot new playwright Paul Downs Colaizzo
of “Really, Really” fame at Signature Theater
through December. Just to know you’re in
good hands, Michael Kahn, the Shakespere
Theatre Company Artistic Director, is directing.
Also at Signature through November 24 is
the first of three world premiere musicals. In
“Crossings”, a train station platform becomes
a meeting place across time and space. Music
and lyrics by Matt Conner and book by Grace
Barnes, directed by Signature artistic director
Eric Schaeffer.

It’s “Appropriate” at Woolly Mammoth
Theatre —Woolly Mammoth Theatre , the
city’s always cool, never-too-old cutting edge
theatre is presenting the East DCoast premiere
of “Appropriate”, a comic drama by
Washingtonian Branden Jacobs-Jekiins, directed
by Liesl Tommy. It’s a sharp-eyed, sharptongued
look at what lies beneath a Souther
families’ secrets. Through Dec. 1.

Star-Crossed Lovers—“Love in Afghanistan”,
playwright Charles Randolph Wright’s new
play about what happens when a hip hop star
entertaining troops in Afghanistan, meets a
young AFghanistani enterpreter committed to
the fraught-with-danger cause of helping her
country’s women. Through Nov. 17.

An Argument—“The Argument”, a newly commissioned
2013 edition of Alexandra Gersten Vassilaro’s relationship drama is now at [Theater
J]9http://washingtondcjcc.org/center-for-arts/theater-j/) through Nov. 24. [gallery ids="118705,118699,118694,118679,118687" nav="thumbs"]

Women of Vision: National Geographic Photographers on Assignment
•

The best photographers are great storytellers.
Behind their camera, they must
capture moments of utmost brevity, where
time and place, lightness and dark, character and
environment cross paths at a seamless and transitory
juncture. Among cacophonous crowds,
deeply sensitive natural or human circumstances,
unfamiliar territory and unpredictable situations,
photographers integrate with their surroundings
and pluck the defining moments left dangling in
time and place right out of the atmosphere with
the click of a button.

To use a profoundly ridiculous metaphor
(which is often the best way to think about
things), the hair-trigger accuracy and rigorous
focus required of a photojournalist on assignment
is comparable to a marksman hitting only
small red clay pigeons while multiple flying
targets of every size and color are coming at
him from every direction, while he is walking
through a noisy, crowded plaza and answering
questions from every curious bystander asking
him the purpose of what he is doing.

From this chaos, photojournalists, like those
who work for the National Geographic Society,
bring us memorable stories from around the
world full of stunning insights and surprises that
could often never be expressed with words.

Another truly remarkable thing about photography
is its neutralizing effect on authorship.
You cannot look at a photograph and tell whether
it was taken by a woman or a man—you cannot
discern the color of the photographer’s skin, their
age, background or religion. All you can know
and appraise is the image, and that effect is a
refreshing and admirable lens to the world.

“Women of Vision: National Geographic
Photographers on Assignment,” on view at the
National Geographic Museum through March
9, offers audiences a collection of photographs
by a new generation of female photojournalists
who approach their subjects with a passion and
compassion that lives in each image. The exhibit
features the work of eleven photographers, and
though the subject matter could not be more varied,
it is woven together by the marvel of visual
storytelling that has come to define National
Geographic’s unprecedented legacy.

Among the photographers featured, many
have managed to penetrate aspects of society
that a male photographer could never
access. Stephanie Sinclair spent years working
on assignment in Iraq and Lebanon, bringing
attention to gender and human rights issues,
especially the emotional and physical abuse
faced by young girls in many societies in this
region. Images from her decade-long project
on child marriage, “Too Young to Wed,” some
on view in this exhibit, have been shown at the
United Nations and garnered multiple awards.
Her exploration of the Fundamentalist Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is also eye
opening, as she explored the female perspective
of polygamous households and the unique relationships
involved therein.

Similarly, Lynsey Addario’s series on women
in Afghanistan are deeply moving, from female
police officers at target practice, some of whom
joined the force after losing their husband in
service, to a young girl who tried to burn herself
alive to escape her potential future of abusive
marriage, poverty and the stress of war.

Kitra Cahana has done unique work exploring
the often journalistically neglected culture of
women in society, even here in the United States.
Her portrait of a teenage girl in Austin, Texas
offers an intimate glimpse into the isolation of
a young woman’s growing pains, even among
the starry, warm lights of her bustling cultural
metropolis.

From the elegant landscapes of the Mongolian
steppes and American West to war torn battlefields
of Iraq and Afghanistan, from the last great
wildernesses of Africa to the lives of people from
the Arctic to the Jersey Shore, the stories these
photographers tell explore modern realities and
what it means to be human in the 21st Century.
With more than 100 images and multimedia, this
exhibition profiles the lives and work of these
important photojournalists. As an audience we
marvel at the mystery in the everyday and recognize
the dearly familiar in the remotest places.
Their images live beyond the page and transform
the world we know.

At Arena Stage: de Pizan HonorsNovember 6, 2013
• November 6, 2013

On Oct. 9, the National Women?s History Museum bestowed the third annual de Pizan Honors ?honoring women from the past and present who have shaped history.? NWHM President and CEO Joan Wrages spoke at Arena Stage of the continuing hope to make this the first women?s history museum in a nation?s capital. The Henry Blackwell award went to Ken Burns for his PBS production on Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Other awardees included Phylicia Rashad and Washington?s own Denyce Graves. It was duly noted, as concerns the future museum, ?If the Egyptians had to have the plans passed by Congress, there might not be pyramids.?

Craft2WearNovember 6, 2013
•

The Smithsonian Women?s Committee produced the Craft2Wear show and sale of wearable art
at the National Building Museum Oct. 25 to 27. The Advance Chance Party gave an early glimpse
of the clothing, jewelry and accessories for women and men showcased by 50 exhibitors previously
juried into Smithsonian Craft Shows. Carolyn L. E. Benesh, co-editor of Ornament Magazine,
served as honorary chair.

Malmaison Celebrates a Real Grand Opening
• October 31, 2013

A nice blend of grand opening party-goers were treated to the tastes, sounds and look of the Popals’ latest restaurant creation, Malmaison, at 34th and K, Oct. 15.

Down at the Georgetown waterfront, the restaurant has been open and active for a few months already. As Zubair Popal mentioned in a message, “I know, I know,” there have been several parties already, but this was the real deal for the new hot spot.

Other restaurants by the Popal family include Cafe Bonaparte on Wisconsin Avenue and Napoleon Bistro on Columbia Road. The multi-tasking Malmaison serves breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as being available for special events and meetings. It is named after French Empress Josephine’s estate outside Paris, and its original name means something like “bad” or “ill-fated house.” Well, in a different time and space, the new incarnation seems happily situated. After all, there is nothing mal about this Malmaison.

[gallery ids="101503,151434,151432,151424,151407,151404,151400,151420,151412,151414,151428" nav="thumbs"]

Old and New: Catching the Wind With Donovan
•

Donovan Leitch was in the wind, halted for a day and night in Georgetown.

Like all poets, minstrels, the self-professed Hurdy Gurdy Man was on the move, like a stitch of moon on the rise.

He had done a concert at the Robert E. Parilla Performing Arts Center in Rockville, Md., the night before, appearing surely a little like an unexpected apparition and legend there. Next day, he was on his way for a visit to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, the scene of a signal triumph only the year before. That’s when he was inducted into the R&R Hall of Fame, an event many of his admirers, of the torch holders with giddy lyrics of 1960s hits like “Sunshine Superman,” “Mellow Yellow,” “Wear Your Love Like Heaven” running through their heads was way overdue.

And he was singing and talking about “Shadows of Blue,” a resurrection album of sorts, perhaps also long overdue, which he recorded in Nashville this year, the place where much of the music began for him. It was full of songs he’d put aside, like notes for a novel or a poem, and they sat in his life waiting patiently along with some new works.

We caught up with him then in the lobby of the Georgetown Inn. He wasn’t difficult to spot: in the flesh, as in the music, there is no one that looks or sounds like Donovan Leitch. We’d run into him before, at the Govinda Gallery, where some years ago he had an exhibition of his “Sapphographs,” at the Kennedy Center with movie director David Lynch of “Blue Velvet” fame where on a Transcendental Meditation event, and most recently and again at the Kennedy Center where he was a part of a star-studded tribute to Woody Guthrie, a man whose life and music haunts him and inspired him.

There’s a singular look to him, and now that look, which had the air of a Celtic Rimbaud, an affable, seductive boy-poet about it, is still there, weathered a bit, deepened, but still, in his sixties, having already lived a few lives, youthfully buoyant and full of eager curiosity. He is one of those singers whose singing voice sounds like his speaking voice. It’s not exactly musical, but it has the singer’s loop of valleys and ridges and side roads.

“By God, it’s good to be here,” he said. “I love Georgetown. So many good memories and good friends and people.”

In his hotel room, a weathered guitar lies on the bed, a green and color-hued guitar, it looks well-used, no spit and polish there. “It’s seen some days,” he said. “But I like it that way.” Whereupon, he launched into a story about Jimmy Paige of Led Zeppelin and his cache of electric guitars, their own, shiny, cleaned and tuned every day, and never played. “He showed them to me once,” he said. “Can you imagine, all of that, finely tuned, no sound?”

“These songs in this album, they were waiting, for a long time,” he said. “It’s like poetry, the time has to be ripe and right. It was right now.”

We can and do, of course, wander over the course of his life, in which an idea or two figure so strongly, come together. If you remember the 1960s at all, smoked some stuff, danced with hippie girls, you were seduced and driven by the music. The music started out in protest and folk music and moved into a rich and deep musical labyrinth which was full of colorful and amazing wizardly characters. In that time, what you did more than anything was move to the music that had lyrics you never forgot. It’s easy to lose track of Donovan in all those names—the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Stones, the Animals, Zeppelin, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Santana, Joplin and Slick, not to mention Otis and Hendrix, and Motown in the background.

But there was also only one Donovan Leitch, a Scottish lad who had his days of street singing sticking his hat out with his pal Gypsy Dave vagabonding and busking but who would become a singer-songwriter and star in that cauldron of folk and funk and rock and roll, with his first hit “Catch the Wind.” “That’s when things went into the stratosphere,” he said. In the collection album, “The Essential Donovan,” you can catch that rising wind. He was a part of it all, with a singular do, and a singular voice, and the do is still there, a little wilder, gray streaked, and the pure eyes and just that voice, with etchings of rock and roll and balladry in it.

No question that he was a star. He has an id and an ego, and lots of his sentences begin with the letter I, but then he has a lot to say and talk about, and when he says “I think”, you tend to listen. But in a conversation like this, a lot of that doesn’t matter—you begin to realize after all these years, how much of an original he is, and how original all of them were. In that hall of fame and the roster of rockers and singers and balladeers and players, there is no other “Donovan,” not even a sixth cousin, although many have said that he was a lot like Dylan. “You can say it if you want,” he said. “I learned a lot and sure there is influence from everybody. Mine included me dad, and Dylan, sure, and Rambling Jack Elliott, who was a friend.”

There is, once you think about it, a touch of the ancient about him—ancient Greece, medieval rover-abouting, the spoken word becoming the sung truth. He was born in Maryhill, Glasgow, and he talks about his dad a lot—one Donald Leitch, a Rolls Royce factory employee, but a man whom Donovan sees as having the touch of the poet.

And that’s it too—that lyric, minstrel thing—his autobiography is “Donovan, the Hurdy Gurdy Man,” which in America is a step removed from Mr. Bo Jangles and the like. The whole book is full of poetics, and lyrics and lines both straight, and crooked. Look at the chapter headings and you can sum him up pretty well: “Rebel,” “Vagabond,” “Windcatcher” and “Folksinger” early on, “Fairytale,” “The World Is Beautiful,” “Sunshine Supergirl,” “Magician” and so on.

You end up talking snatches of memory, lines from poem, and you end up in the end really appreciating his gifts. You look him up, hear the poem he said for acceptance, listen to him sing “Season of the Witch” with John Cougar Mellencamp, how he presents himself as a gift of the muse that is music.

I sat down and wrote this article, while listening to his music. You realize, though the two albums are years apart—that it’s a long time from “Electric Banana” to “Blue Jean Angel”– the early work still seems brand new, while the later songs and music feel sometimes like an echo finally freed as well as finely ground. Those bookends make the old music new, the new music old. They come together in a kind of dance.

Donovan’s been nominated for the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. Rolling Stone raved about “Shadows of Blue.” He’ll be in Ireland singing. It’s like, just like the song, he’s still “Catching the Wind,” not a second wind, but something as fresh as the first wind.

Modern ‘Leger’ in Philly
• October 24, 2013

In the catalogue for the exhibition “Léger: Modern Art and the Metropolis,” a photograph shows the painter at the opening of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Gallatin Collection in 1943. Age 62 at the time, Léger stands in front of his 1919 masterpiece, “The City.” He looks like a working-class Frenchman, a veteran of World War I, who has carefully parted his hair, combed his moustache, and put on his best jacket and tie for the occasion.

Fernand Léger was such a man, but he was also one of the most sophisticated artists of his generation—and it was quite a generation. Born in 1881, he was less than two years younger than Matisse and about nine months older than Picasso.

We are far less familiar with Léger than with these 20th-century superstars. Fewer examples of his work are owned by American museums and retrospectives are rare (the last, at MoMA, was in 1998). But this is also because, trained as an architect and designer, much of Léger’s artistic activity extended beyond easel painting to mural painting, sculpture, set and costume design, and even filmmaking.

Curated by Anna Vallye, the Philadelphia exhibition centers on this range of activity, much of it collaborative, in the Paris of the 1920s. Parts of the show, which runs through January 5, evoke the urban vibrancy of the Machine Age that inspired Léger and his colleagues.

At the entrance, on a large screen, is a captivating—if gray and grainy—two-minute trip up the Eiffel Tower, filmed by Thomas Edison and James White in 1900 at the Paris Exposition Universelle. This is one of half a dozen films playing continuously in the exhibition, several with modernist soundtracks.

One, the landmark “Ballet Mécanique of 1924,” is a 16-minute experimental film co-directed by Léger and American filmmaker Dudley Murphy, accompanied by a score by another American, George Antheil, for percussion, pianos, player pianos, propellers, electric bells, and a siren. The images, in rapid alternation and succession, include smiling lips, a peasant woman climbing stairs carrying a sack, parrots, automobiles seeming to run over the viewer, and kitchenware in motion.

Those who have visited the Ballets Russes exhibition at the National Gallery will find a sidebar in the Philadelphia show, as Léger designed sets and costumes for Ballets Suédois (Swedish). An abstract backdrop designed by Léger for that troupe’s 1922 production of “Skating Rink”—inspired by Charlie Chaplin’s film “The Rink”—dominates the rear wall.

But the centerpiece of the exhibition, though it comes early on, is “The City,” on view along with three good-size oil studies. Nearly ten feet wide and seven and a half feet high, “The City” demonstrates a mastery of color and composition that is hard to grasp. You could imagine it being cut up to make eight great, mostly abstract paintings, or more, except that it is seamless, a thrilling and beautiful whole.

Other paintings on view have this quality of being somehow both challenging and beautiful, including, “Disks of 1918,” “Mechanical Elements of 1924,” “Composition of 1923-27” and the extraordinary post-Cubist café scene “Composition with Hand and Hats of 1927.” There are also works by artists such as Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, Lissitzky, Man Ray, Metzinger, Mondrian, and Murphy (his wonderful, very “American Razor”).

The only reference to Léger’s later career is the seven-part “Study for a Cinematic Mural of 1938-39,” a commission for Rockefeller Center that was never carried out. Though the informality of these works is partly due to their being studies on cardboard, they also have a Rousseau-like vitality, incorporating an almost cartoon-like Statue of Liberty. They remind us of another artist from Normandy, Raoul Dufy, and of Léger’s importance as a precursor of the Pop artists of the 1950s and 1960s [gallery ids="118757,118761" nav="thumbs"]

Sutton Foster: All-Broadway, Yet Intimate, Too, at the Strathmore
• October 21, 2013

People who know about Sutton Foster talk about Broadway, the whole story line around her career and that’s as it should be. Broadway is where Foster made her mark, an indelible mark rewarded with two Tony awards, Drama Desk Awards and Outer Circle Awards, especially for her landmark starring roles in “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and “Anything Goes.”

But the Sutton Foster that will be in concert at the Music Center at Strathmore, 8 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 12, will not just be the Broadway star, she’ll be a star in the firmament of cabaret signers, which, as a tribe, are hallmarked for their originality. She’ll be singing Broadway songs, unexpected pop classics, songs from her album “Wish” and, oh, just wait and see . . .

“It will be a lot more intimate, a lot more of who I am, and I hope eclectic and different,” Sutton said in a phone interview. “It’s a challenge, but I’ve been doing it now for a while—all over the country, as well as at the Café Carlyle, which is really a wonderful, small place for singers.”

Sutton is one of those performers who isn’t everything she’s capable of at first glance. She’s one of those people who can do it all—a quickly disappearing type on the stage and in film and television. She can act—see her work on the much acclaimed but sadly cancelled “Bunhead”, and on Off-Broadway in “Trust”. She can sing, she can play the ingénue, the sexy, brassy powerhouse, she can be both winsome and Ethel Mermanish, she can, for sure, dance and strike a pose, and she can tap. She’s funny, physically and otherwise, the humor and optimism shine through.

“There’s a body of work, and I’m proud of all of that,” she said. “This is new, it’s a little like showing some parts of yourself, you’re not playing a part. It’s very liberating, after the Broadway work. And of course, I’m working with Michael Rafter, my arranger and pianist, who is just amazing. When we did the Carlyle, it was the most intimate place, and I think at first it was scary. It’s like a living room with 90 people in it and yet, as setting like that, it let’s you be vulnerable and I like that.” You can find one part of it on You Tube, Foster, goofy, bold, making faces, singing in high dudgeon on “I Don’t Wanna Show Off” from “The Drowsy Chaperone,” a surprise hit in which she starred.”

“You want to challenge yourself,you always want to grow in this business, you can’t be looking back and trying to repeat yourself. Things move fast.

“That’s why when I was offered “Bunheads”, which aired on ABC, I jumped at it,” she said. “It meant moving to Los Angeles, and I was very much a part of New York. But the part was wonderful.”

She played a Las Vegas showgirl, teaching dance, and it was, by all accounts a unique work. “It was so amazing an experience, so different from anything I’d done.

And it got cancelled. “That was a shock, but I’d do that again in a heartbeat. We just didn’t see it coming.”

She has grown a lot since she first made her mark on Broadway when in classic Broadway lore style, she was plucked from the ensemble (she’d already been in “Annie”, “Les Miz” among others) to replace Erin Daily, the star of “Thoroughly Modern Millie” during rehearsals in San Diego in 2002. The result was the kind of impact and “star-is-born” buzz, enough to win a Tony and other awards.

Although she went on to other hit shows as “Little Women”, The Drowsy Chaperone”, “Young Frankenstein”, and “Shrek”, she had to wait until 2011, when she got the coveted part of the spectacular Reno Sweeney in the remounting of “Anything Goes” (a big smash, hit in New York and on the road) and she absolutely killed it. It’s a bravura part and she put the kind of zing on it that made it hers for the duration of her run. She wore hot costumes, red-hot, she tapped, she danced, she dazzled everybody and your momma, her voice belting out the big numbers.

You see the pictures of her, the interviews, the videos and you see all sorts of people, because of her many gifts. She’s a swan who can actually play the part of duck, if she had to, she could probably still play Cinderella, or a woman growing into herself, serious as the blues.

There’s another online video, a long session made from an “Anything Goes” rehearsal, the title song number at the end of the first act, one of the most happiness-inducing numbers (thank you, Cole Porter) ever created. In it, just about the whole cast is involved, and most are in street clothes, and there’s no glamorous, glittery costume for Foster, just a wispy pull on blouse slacks and tap heels, casual lady in ponytail.

If you watch her closely, surprising you with the gutsy range of her voice, with those languid hand gestures, light, and precise with her moves and taps, she makes everything look almost as casual as breathing in and out. This young woman (she’s 38 now and still looks a little like an ingénue, all eyes, long legs and arms, gangly and lovely) seems hardly to be working up a sweat through the number, which is fast, furious and insinuating. And here’s the thing: at the end, and throughout you see someone totally at home in her world, she’s confident, happy, there’s this rush going on around her that seems like a force of nature.

It will be a little quieter at Strathmore, although it’s hardly an intimate room, what with nearly 2,000 seats and perfect acoustics.

She’s probably going to show off, make you feel some things you didn’t expect to feel, don’t know how, don’t know when, but she will.

‘La Forza del Destino’: Overwrought, But Worth the Wild Ride
•

From everything we know, Francesca Zambello—in her first full season as Washington National Opera’s artistic director—likes a challenge. From everything we know about composer Guiseppe Verdi, he can certainly present a challenge, especially with “La Forza del Destino” (“The Force of Destiny”), a rarely performed—for any number of sensible reasons—minefield of an opera, which presents directors, conductors and singers with an array of pitfalls.

If this relatively—it’s three hours plus but could be longer, depending on what’s in and what’s out—short production wavers and falters here and there, and sometimes threatens to crash into chaos and confusion, everyone on hand can take a little responsibility. But the principal fault is the opera’s construction, its raison d’etre. The music, as with all things Verdi, is awesome, while the libretto, based on the play “Don Alvaro” by Angel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, written in 1835, is not so much.

Yet the production, set more or less in vague, contemporary times in Spain and Italy, also manages to be compelling, its very overwrought craziness almost works for it. For that, Zambello can take a lot of credit—just for daring not to play it safe on Verdi’s centenary with a Verdi crowd pleaser, and for moving everything along at a feverish pace, overcoming the opera’s improbabilities, and outcomes, which are just plain too, well, operatic.

Give some credit, too, to young American soprano Adina Aaron, who has already had some notable triumphs, including “Aida” at Glimmerglass, directed by Zambello. She took the lead role of the tragic Donna Leonora, who is driven to a life of solitude and isolation after her beloved Don Alvaro accidentally was responsible for killing Leonora’s father, the Marquis of Calatrava as the couple were about to elope against the father’s wishes. Aaron sings movingly and with emotional and vocal range—especially in the quieter scenes, as she anguished her loyalties for love and family and pleads to be allowed into sanctuary and solitude. Vocally, she tugged at the audience with her voice and her ability to perform as a tragic heroine.

Verdi doesn’t help matters, of course, by literally disappearing her for most of the lengthy second act, which leaves the narrative and the singing in the hands of the Chilean tenor Giancarlo Monsalve, who sings Don Alvaro and American tenor Mark Delavan, who plays the implacable Don Carlo, Leonora’s brother on the hunt for vengeance for the stain on the family honor who has vowed to avenge the murder of his father and the dishonoring of his sister. The best way to do that—kill both of them. But after Leonora has made her way to solitude, Don Alvaro and Don Carlo, each searching for Leonora, each living under false names, get caught up in a vaguely modern war where the sides are not quite identifiable as gunmen, armed with AK-47s, hunt each other amid a scarred, charred city landscape, both saving each other’s lives in turn.

The trouble here isn’t just that the story gets a little silly. There’s only so much coincidence you can blame on destiny. The concern is that a certain sameness sets in: the two men sing about their plans, their cries for vengeance or despair—the vengeance for Carlo, the despair for Alvaro, who more than several times lets out that he only hopes for death. For a time, each is unaware of the other’s identity and have become sort of frenemies, buddies in risks, danger and courage. But alas, Carlo soon finds who Alvaro is, and the chase is on again after a bitter but inconclusive fight. Oddly enough, Alvaro winds up as taking up the cloth in the very same monastery where Leonora is hidden— ah, destiny. And soon enough, the three are reunited, with tragic results.

Mansalve hits his mark and notes and cuts a dashing figure, and Carlos is a menacing, large figure who you can certainly hear, but neither makes an emotional impact—and for those two, it’s a long time to carry the production before Leonora reappears. Musically, Chinese-American conductor Zian Zhang leads with energy and force, almost to a fault. The war is presented by Zambello and designer Peter J. Davison with verve, smarts and high, stark drama, the combat zone starts out as a kind of red light district, where the impassioned Preziosilla, a kind of hot-stuff seer and kinky prophetess, holds forth with bold passion as played by Georgian mezzo-soprano Ketevan Kemoklidze, turns into ruins and doubles at times as a portable MASH unit.

The scenes at the monastery are striking, touching and quite powerful, and sometimes—when the whiny priest Melitone (Columbian bass-baritone Valeriano Lanchas) is on hand—even funny.

Zambello chose to put the noted overture at the start of the proceedings with the performers miming actions. It seemed a muted way to begin, especially with the opening scene exploding into startling drama and great beauty, when Leonara sings how she is torn between her great love and loyalty to her father, whom she loves. Everything seems to happen at once: “Shots fired,” confusion, escape, abandonment in the space of minute. And we and they are all off in pursuit of: glory, peace, love, adventure, danger, requitement and forgiveness, vengeance and all the usual stuff.

What Zambello has done is to bring all this to preposterous and often thrilling live action—the landscapes, and settings brim with the energies and schemes, the sorrows not just of heroes, villains and heroines, but priests, the starving, the wounded, the holy and unholy all around them.

That’s what makes this particular “La Forza del Destino”, a force, if not of destiny, at least high drama and stirring (by Aaron and the orchestra) music.

At the Kennedy Center: “La Forza del Destino” will be performed Oct. 16, 20, 24 and 26, while Amber Wagner, Rafael Davila and Luca Salsi will take on the three principals Donna Leonora, Don Alvaro and Don Carlo on Oct. 18 and 22.