United States Verdi, Un ballo in maschera: Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of San Francisco Opera / Eun Sun Kim (conductor). War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, 6.9.2024. (HS)
Production:
Director – Leo Muscato
Sets – Federica Parolini
Costumes – Silvia Aymonino
Lighting – Alessandro Verazzi
Choreographer – Colm Seery
ight director – Dave Maier
Chorus director – John Keene
Cast:
King Gustav III – Michael Fabiano
Amelia – Lianna Haroutounian
Renato – Amartuvshin Enkhbat
Oscar – Mei Gui Zhang
lrica – Judit Kutasi
Tom – Jongwon Han
Samuel – Adam Lau
Silvano – Samuel Kidd
Strong singing, lively conducting by music director Eun Sun Kim and a few dazzling visual moments combined to make a qualified success of Un ballo in maschera in San Francisco Opera’s 2024-25 season opener. It has been ten years since this opera, a fine example of Verdi’s mid-career prime, was last mounted here, and it bears the composer’s magic for robust scene-setting for the orchestra and vocal writing that brings out the best in specific voices.
The story is based on a real-life eighteenth-century king of Sweden, a forward-thinking monarch who founded the academy that still doles out Nobel prizes. He was much loved by his subjects, but he gained power in a coup that left some nobles wishing him dead. A cabal succeeded in assassinating him at a masked ball. The opera interpolates a love triangle involving the king and the wife of his confidant, and that sparks most of the juiciest music.
For her part, Kim continued a long-term project of conducting all of Verdi’s operas, much of it new territory for her. As in recent seasons with La traviata and Il trovatore, she kept tempos moving briskly throughout and wrangled the often-tricky connections between the orchestra and the cast with care. Occasionally, the quick pace softened the music’s emotional impact but, fortunately, singers in the four lead roles delivered consistently beautiful sound. For the big moments, sopranos Lianna Haroutounian and Mei Gui Zhang, tenor Michael Fabiano and baritone Amartuvshin Enkhbat also ramped up their vocal characterizations.
As a clueless King Gustavo III, Fabiano sailed easily through the music, never forced, and lavishing the lyric tenor line with polish along with a regal bearing that felt utterly natural. As his love interest, Haroutounian, a perpetually frightened Amelia, paired well vocally with Fabiano. Both have excelled in starring roles at San Francisco Opera in recent years, although not together until this time.
Zhang as Oscar, the king’s page, camped it up like an escapee from a French opéra comique, tossing in some anachronistic dancing as she sang and acted with vivid bounciness, her physical presence meshing nicely with her silvery sound. She handled Verdi’s light gymnastics with ease. Zhang made an impact in 2022 as Dai Yun in David Henry Hwang’s Dream of the Red Chamber and Eurydice in Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice.
Making his company debut in the role of Renato, the king’s confidant, Enkhbat made up for some stiff acting with his resonant, milk-chocolate timbre, rock-solid intonation and attention to the text. He delivered the famous aria, ‘Eri tu’, with aplomb, one of the vocal highlights of the evening. (His costume did not help – a ludicrous blue uniform with gold epaulets, a yellow sash and knee boots that made him look like a comic-opera clown.)
Mezzo-soprano Judit Kutasi, who made a huge impression here as Ortrud in last season’s Lohengrin, lent vocal weight and sly dramatic touches to an appropriately witchy Ulrica, the soothsayer who accurately predicts, in Act I, the assassination in Act III.
Except for Oscar’s flamboyant black-and-white geometric-patterned outfits (and Renato’s uniform), the rest of the costumes traded in dull colors and traditional looks. So did the sets, and these choices contributed to a gloomy look overall.
Director Leo Muscato’s straightforward staging, first seen at Teatro dell’Opera di Roma in 2016 and revived in 2019 at Teatro di San Carlo, was making its first appearance in the United States. Thankfully, there was no attempt to impose a directorial concept, a rare thing in these days of directors with concepts. The production went decidedly old-school: some others have portrayed a romantic connection between the king and Oscar, playing off historians’ suggestions that the real-life King Gustavo III was gay.
Designer Federica Parolini mounted the sets on a revolving stage divided like a pie into sections. While this smoothed out the scene changes, the hemmed-in space left little elbow room for a crowd, and in four of the seven scenes unimaginative blocking made for too many static moments. The rotating stage paid off, however, in the transition to the masked ball finale. The ballroom glided into place from the king’s private rooms without a pause in the music.
Lighting designer Alessandro Verazzi provided some vivid visuals. Angular side lighting and well-thought-out spotlighting created eerie shadows that underlined the spookiness and brought emotional focus to the scene in Ulrica’s domain. Similar lighting created extra depth for Gustavo’s reflective aria, which led to the final scene.
Even better was the setting in Act II for the gallows field, defined by a forest of bleak black trees against rising wafts of dense vapor (made of steam and liquid nitrogen) saturated with red, magenta and yellow lighting. That scene was also musically and dramatically expressive, with Haroutounian and Fabiano creating some moments of real tension and passion.
There were no weak links in the rest of the cast, all current or recent Adler Fellows in the company’s young artists program. The chorus did its part with its usual precision, and a troupe of six dancers added splashes of color and some slinky flair to the party music in the final scene.
This all counted toward a performance to be appreciated for its sure-handed pace, drama and sound. As good as the solo singers, chorus and orchestra were, it could still come together better to achieve that exultant frisson that makes Verdi so exciting when it all works. There are six more performances, through 27 September, to get there.
Harvey Steiman
No mention of the implausible plot. A grown woman looking for a magic herb and then supposedly being escorted home by her own husband. I also found the Italian diction to be deficient from most singer except maybe Fabiano.