When the Marchese bursts back in, it is to a thunderous statement of the theme of Destiny itself—the theme that quietly but, we could say, insidiously sets the Sinfonia in motion, then courses its way through the other themes of the overture, reminding us repeatedly of its impetus. We will hear fragments of it in Leonora’s flight to the monastery, but not again in full form until the last scene, when Leonora silences it with her swell-and-dminished “Pace!” In the confrontation with the Marchese, Alvaro reveals his noble nature. To us, his stalwart manning-up may seem a puzzling eagerness to obey the very social codes and strictures that seek to exclude him. But in the world of the opera, nobility is held to be inborn, “in the bloodline.” Alvaro need take no individual oath to act nobly under mortal stress; it’s in his makeup. When he takes sole responsibility for the couple’s actions, when he declares Leonora “pure as an angel” (and surely he is telling the truth—nothing will happen without benefit of clergy), when he puts his life in the Marchese’s hands, and when he unarms himself, he is following his instinct, not just his upbringing, and when the cast-off pistol discharges with fatal result, his outcry is “O sorte!“—Fate in the form of the improbable outcome of a nobly sacrificial act (no good deed shall go unpunished), confirming the dark prediction he carries within him.

If we were to judge the Alvaro of Brian Jagde by the standards of the tenors I wrote about in 2018, to say nothing of others we have recorded access to (most notably Caruso and Martinelli), we should find him wanting in terms of beauty and calibre of voice and of the expressive potential in the bonding of the Italian singing line with the Italian language. But in terms of what seems possible today, he is a welcome presence. His voice has sufficient strength and, on occasion, impact; its quality is at least attractive and not lacking in squillo; his technique is solid enough to keep us unworried; and he sings with energy, commitment, and an awareness of the effects that need to register. He’s also alive and alert onstage. So as Porgy says, “No use complainin’.”

Don Carlo di Vargas, Leonora’s brother, first seen disguised as “Pereda,” a student. We meet him in the scene of the Inn at Hornachuelos, and after a single line sung aside that lets us know who he really is and what he’s really after, he introduces us to the fact that for most of the action’s duration, all three members of our conflicted trio will be passing under false identities. Carlo has dangerous fun with his, spinning an elaborate tale that teases the inn’s assemblage of travelers by relating the truth of his pursuit, but from a pretended bystander’s viewpoint. We pick up a certain sense of humor and imaginative inventiveness to go with the relentless vengefulness we’ll be living with for most of his onstage time. Were his Inn Scene story to be sung with the score’s indicated elegance, and were that to be carried over into the embellished phrases of the cantabile of his magnificent third-act double aria, we would have a picture of a highborn, cultivated man whose homicidal mission is an unquestioned fulfillment of the responsibilities that have fallen on him as the next in line of a noble family. It is his mission to carry out his father’s curse, and that is to be accomplished in strict adherence to the same code of conduct that bound so many who came before him. As it turns out, Carlo follows the code only in a technical sense (“I didn’t promise that“), but that’s one of any code’s advantages for those who adhere to them—you’re clean as long as you stick to its letter.