La forza del destino was accorded only one full-length studio recording in the 78-rpm era (despite the cuts, those must have been hefty albums), but it’s a splendid one from 1941on the Cetra label under the fiery and authoritative Gino Marinuzzi, with an all-Italian lineup of major voices in healthy shape: Maria Caniglia, Ebe Stignani, Galliano Masini, Carlo Tagliabue, Tancredi Pasero, and Saturno Meletti. With the advent of the LP, four more studio versions emerged during the 1950s. By 1965, RCA Victor had issued another edition, with Leontyne Price as Leonora, bringing us well along toward her second recording of the role, the 1975 effort that Richard Slade didn’t need to have in his house (see Part 1). While for my purpose of demonstrating what 7-to-7.5 was all about, the raw reportage of real-time opera house events is far preferable to studio recordings, the latter hold their riches, and will provide some context here. (For anyone of archeological bent, my opinions of the then-extant studio versions can be found in the Forza section of my Verdi discography in High Fidelity, Jan., 1963. By and large, those opinions could stand as mine today, if the difference in context is taken into account.)

In its cast of principals and in the matter of cuts, the New Orleans performance is close to a typical good night at the Met in the early-to-mid-1950s. As a broadcast recording of a decade earlier (Jan. 23, 1943, Bruno Walter, cond.) informs us, the Met had up to that time followed the longstanding but incomprehensible Italian custom of omitting the Act 3 Alvaro/Carlo confrontation (“Sleale! Il segreto fu dunque violato!). In the new production in the fall of this very season, this was restored. But one step forward, two back: the entire Inn Scene was dropped. So much for Preziosilla, with her sly fortune-telling and troop recruiting; for Carlo in the first of his false identities, with his ballad and his chance to show at least some tactical variants to his one-track vengeful mentality; for Trabuco and his mules; for the whole spectacle of this village pit-stop in the early stages of the story of flight and pursuit—the muleteers at table or dancing, the mayor, the passing pilgrims. With this scene gone and, if for no other reason than to give the soprano a chance to change into her high-road mufti and catch her breath, the overture was played between the opening scene and the Convent Scene, a ridiculous arrangement. ^(I)

Nonetheless, Forza exerted its grip in those years, and it does here, too, despite the occasional orchestral or choral contretemps (Walter Herbert, the company’s longtime Artistic Director and a very able musician, sees to it that the show goes on), as well as additional unhelpful trimming and re-arranging. (Trabuco is gone entirely, ditto the “Lorchè pifferi e tamburi” chorus, while Preziosilla’s Inn Scene song is imported into Act 3, where it’s redundant.) The performance rides entirely on its principal singers. Here we go with the “faults of ea.”:
§ Milanov, as was her wont, sometimes does little scoops into notes; sometimes takes odd breaths to set for high notes; sometimes resorts to what we might call the all-purpose grand diva emotive accent.
§ Del Monaco, with his puissant but stiffly held tenore robusto, for the most part sings “square,” attempting portamento only on inescapably lyrical phrases, often clipping off a line ending without true finish. The balm of vibrato is frequently absent in declamatory passages. Between thrills, he used to drive me to distraction with these and a few other habits.
§ Leonard Warren (Carlo): In declamatory or excitable midrange moments (like the forte lines in the recitative before “Urna fatale”), we hear the tremulous shuddering that, from mid-career onward, often invaded at such junctures. At cadential points and in his cabaletta, he rewrites words strictly to his convenience. His treatment of the language  on the line can be more deliberate than fluent.
§ William Wildermann (the Padre Guardiano): At one important crescive point, the E natural at “Maledizione!” as he summons a curse on any intruder on Leonora’s refuge, the voice won’t quite carry through with solid resonance. At times, Americanisms nag at his pronuncia.