La Forza del Destino opera in quattro atti... Poesia di F.M. Piave Rappresentata per la prima volta al Teatro Imperiale Italiano di Pietroburgo il 10 Novembre 1862 Riduzione per Canto e Pianoforte di Luigi Truzzi. Fr. 50 [Piano-vocal score]

Milano: Tito di Gio. Ricordi [PNs 34681-34715], 1863. Folio. 19th century quarter dark red morocco with red textured boards. 1f. (recto title, verso blank), 1f. (recto named cast list, verso index of 35 numbers), [3] (blank), 4-315 (music), [i] (blank) pp. Title, cast list, and contents typeset; music engraved. Without publisher's blindstamp. With separate caption title, price, imprint, and pagination to each number; continuous pagination to lower outer corners.

Named cast includes Barbot as Leonora, Graziani as Don Carlo di Vargas, Tamberlick as Don Alvaro, Nantier-Didiée as Preziosilla, Angelini as Padre Guardiano, and de Bassini as Fra Melitone.

Binding worn and shaken; head and tail of spine frayed; tears to foot of spine; front endpaper lacking inner corners and with music seller's handstamp; hinge split following second leaf. Minor foxing; some minor staining to lower edges throughout; tear to lower margin of pp. 297-98; pp. 314-15 partially detached. First complete edition, first issue (printed from plates of earlier separate issues). Rare. Hopkinson 60A(a). Chusid p. 80. Verdi Bolletino II/6, p. 1622 (facsimile of title). Crawford p. 587. Hopkinson is in error in transcribing the fourth line of the title, which reads "musica del maestro cav." not "musica dei maestro cav."

La Forza del Destino, an opera in four acts to a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave after Angel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas's play Don Alvaro, o La fuerza del sino, with a scene from Friedrich von Schiller's play Wallensteins Lager, translated by Andrea Maffei, was first performed in St Petersburg at the Imperial Theatre on October 29/November 10, 1862.

"After Un ballo in maschera (finished in early 1858), Verdi experienced his most serious compositional hiatus to date, repeatedly telling friends that he had ceased to be a composer and that his farmlands at S Agata now took up all his time. The breakthrough to fresh creativity came in late 1860 when the famous tenor Enrico Tamberlik wrote to Verdi offering him a commission from the Imperial Theatre at St Petersburg... Serious work began on [La Forza] in August 1861 and by November it was more or less complete (except, as usual, for the orchestration, which Verdi still preferred to complete nearer the time of performance, when he had experienced the singers and the theatrical acoustics at first hand). Verdi left for Russia in late 1861, but the première was postponed owing to the illness of the prima donna. He undertook several lengthy European trips during the first half of 1862 and returned to supervise rehearsals at St Petersburg in September of that year. The first performance, which starred Caroline Barbot (Leonora), Francesco Graziani (Carlo), Enrico Tamberlik (Alvaro) and Constance Nantier-Didiée (Preziosilla), was praised in some journals, but was at best only a moderate success..."

A revised version, with modifications to the text by Antonio Ghislanzoni was first performed in Milan at the Teatro alla Scala on February 27,1869. "The performance was a considerable success and La forza remained a popular element of the repertory during the later years of the 19th century." Roger Parker in Grove Music Online.