Baltimore Opera Company

Study Guide

La Forza del Destino

The Duke of Rivas

Don Ángel de Saavedra y Ramírez de Baquedano, also known as the Duke of Rivas, was born on March 19, 1791 and died June 22, 1865. The Duke was a Spanish poet, dramatist and politician born in a small town in southern Spain named Córdoba. He is achieved acclaim and popularity for his famous play Don Álvaro o La fuerza del sino, the first romantic success in the Spanish theater and the basis for Verdi’s 25th opera, La Forza del Destino.

Rivas had strong political convictions and often used his fame as a platform for expressing his views to the masses. He was also a principal member of the Advanced Liberal Party from 1820 to 1823 and he fought in the war for Spanish independence. In 1823, Rivas was condemned to death for his liberal views and was forced to flee to England. As a sort of Spanish refugee, he went on to live successively in Italy, Malta and France. He didn’t venture home to Spain again until the death of King Ferdinand VII in 1833 and the amnesty of 1834 made the fractured country once again safe for his return. Shortly after his return home, he succeeded his brother as the Duke of Rivas.

In 1835 Rivas became minister of the interior under Prime Minister of Spain, Francisco Javier Isturiz. Again, along with his chief, Rivas left the country. Returning in 1837, he joined the moderate party, became prime minister, and was subsequently ambassador in Paris and Naples and president of the Real Academia Española (Royal Spanish Academy), an institution responsible for the regulation of the Spanish language. Its purpose was "to fix the voices and vocabularies of the Castilian language with propriety, elegance, and purity".

In 1813 he published Ensayos Poéticos, and in the decade between that date and his first exile in 1823, several of his tragedies were performed on the stage. Traces of foreign influence, no doubt a result of his travels during exile, are observable in a narrative titled El Moro expósito he dedicated to his mentor, author and scholar, John Hookham Frere in 1833. As a poet, Rivas's best-known work is Romances históricos; adaptations of popular Spanish legends in ballad form.

Source: Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia

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