Regents Opera, formerly known as Fulham Opera, has announced its new Rory Fazan directed staging of Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino,” featuring a new orchestration for 11 instruments by Ben Woodward. The show will run from February 16-Mar. 5, 2022.

Verdi’s opera is the first production to be staged by Regents since its merger with Fulham Opera in autumn 2020.

Director Rory Fazan said in an official press release, “In some ways ‘La Forza del Destino’ is Verdi’s most ‘Shakespearean’ work, there is drama written on high themes, and there is base comedy. It’s not possible to live a life ‘insulated from history’, but sometimes, in times of security or comfort, our individual lives might feel as if they were cut off from the sorts of things we read about in newspapers or see on the news. The past two years, it goes without saying, have not been such a time, and how timely therefore this production of ‘Forza’ is.”

The cast includes Catharine Woodward and Philippa Boyle as Lenora; Howard Hutt and Dominic J. Walsh as Alvaro; Oliver Gibbs and Andrew Mayor as Don Carlo; Kamilla Dunstan and Catherine Backhouse as Preziosilla; Thomas Isherwood as Melitone; Gerard Delores as The Marquis of Calatrava; Edwin Kaye as Padre Guardino; Robin Whitehouse as Trabuco; Rosalind O’Dowd as Curra; and Masimba Ushe as Alcade.

On the podium will be Ben Woodward and John Paul Jennings.