Switzerland Verdi, Un ballo in maschera: Philharmonia Zurich / Gianandrea Noseda (conductor). Zurich Opera, 8.12.2024. (MF)
Production:
Director – Adele Thomas
Set – Hannah Clark
Lighting – Franck Evin
Video – Tieni Burkhalter
Choreography – Emma Woods
Dramaturgy – Fabio Dietsche
Chorus director – Janko Kastelic
Cast:
Riccardo – Charles Castronovo
Renato – George Petean
Amelia – Erika Grimaldi
Ulrica – Agnieszka Rehlis
Oscar – Katharina Konradi
Silvano – Steffan Lloyd Owen
Samuel – Brent Michael Smith
Tom – Stanislav Vorobyov
A judge – Martin Zysset
Amelia’s servant – Álvaro Diana Sanchez
Dancers – Jessica Falceri, Sara Peña, Sara Pennella, Noa Joanna Ryff, Chiara Viscido, Cristian Alex Assis, Pietro Cono Genova, Davide Pillera, Daniele Romano, Roberto Tallarigo
Un ballo in maschera is a tale of love, treachery and fate. Boston Governor Riccardo secretly loves Amelia, the wife of his loyal friend Count Renato. A conspiracy brews, there is a plot to assassinate Riccardo. Fortune-teller Ulrica warns him he’ll die by the hand of a friend, Riccardo laughs the prophecy off. Lovebirds Amelia and Riccardo meet secretly, only to be discovered by Renato. He is heartbroken and angry about the double betrayal by his friend and his wife. Renato joins the conspirators. At a masked ball, Renato shoots Riccardo. Drawing his last breath, Riccardo forgives his friend, clears Amelia’s name, and dies in true Verdi style with an exhaled addio!
The plot is perhaps not Verdi’s most compelling. He had intended to set King Lear to music but lacked adequate singers. Instead, he settled on the story of an assassinated cheating politician. The initial libretto by Eugène Scribe was, in variations, used to little success by three other composers in the 1830s and 1840s. The original is set in Sweden with Swedish King Gustav III as the protagonist, who is assassinated during a ball at Stockholm Royal Opera. However, the libretto featuring a regicide did not survive Italian censure and Verdi had to relocate the action, opting for far-away Boston. The masked ball made it to the stage, but in disguise.
Notwithstanding a fairly plain story line, Verdi created an opus that mixes comical moments with white-knuckle drama. Along with Italian grande fanfara and a love duet of enthralling intensity, the composer included several variété-inspired cancan numbers inspired by his stay in Paris. Verdi was not primarily interested in historical detail. His focus lay on the emotional power produced by the triangle of Riccardo, his best friend Renato and his wife Amelia.
English director Adele Thomas, who successfully staged Il trovatore in Zurich in 2021, takes a solid, mostly illustrative approach. She sets the piece in nineteenth century America, a time when the East Coast elite was still very much oriented towards England. Cloaked in a southern European name, Riccardo is an emigrant English aristocrat. The directing’s irony, wit and lively images richly compensate for the odd instance of clumsy symbolism.
The opening scene kicks off with an ingenious time-travel spoiler. Riccardo’s corpse, covered by a sheet, lies in a circular operating theatre around which the choir stands. The crowd is divided into supporters and opponents of (the late) Riccardo’s election as governor of Boston. Three women, acting as male doctors, work on the body, removing the bullet which will have killed Riccardo by the end of the evening. Bang on the first notes of the second scene, Riccardo sits up straight from under the sheet and the action takes its course.
The set makes generous use of the revolving stage. The operating theatre morphs into a parliamentary half circle and then becomes Ulrica’s cage. From there it turns to a seedy back alley for Riccardo’s and Amelia’s amorous nocturnal meeting to finally end as carrousel whose illuminated arches are distantly reminiscent of windmill wings – a Moulin Rouge reference? The nineteenth-century costumes are complemented with heavily stylised facial hair for the men. Black and white dominate, from where colourful sartorial interludes emerge to make for a nicely rhythmed back and forth between black and white and chromatics. Disguise and deception abound, women sport tailcoats, dresses are worn by men and interiors are trompe l’oeil.
Whereas on opening night the three protagonists’ acting occasionally seemed a hint static, their musical performances were full of emotion and drama. Charles Castronovo needed a bit of warm-up time and then vividly embodied the passionate and doomed hero with his rich velvety tenor. Italian soprano Erika Grimaldi gave a memorable debut as Amelia. Her ‘Morro, ma prima in grazia’ was a stunning moment of lyrical expression. Her sensitive phrasing conveyed the despair and hope of a woman caught in an inescapable love trap. The voice of George Petean (Renato) had an appealing warmth enveloping the space with an underlying intensity charging his performance with emotion. The baritone shifted seamlessly from a brooding, almost threatening quality to one of profound hurt and disbelief. Agnieszka Rehlis’s Ulrica was suitably mysterious with vocal power and dramatic intensity, even if at times her energy could have been even darker.
Katharina Konradi’s Oscar was a playful whiff of fresh air. Her juvenescent and well-meaning figure inadvertently brings down the Governor by blabbing about his disguise at the ball. With an effortlessly light soprano, Konradi manifested pure joy, singing and dancing her exuberant character to life. Steffan Lloyd Owen and Brent Michael Smith were the two conspirators, selfishly evil twins who in their often-unisono singing bring to mind malicious versions of Thomson and Thompson, the black suited Tintin detectives.
Conductor Gianandrea Noseda is on home turf again after much Wagner in Zurich (Der Ring des Nibelungen; currently he is also conducting Der fliegende Holländer) and Bizet (Carmen). The audience benefits from his expertise as one of the specialists of the Verdi repertoire. It is a genuine pleasure to lose oneself in Noseda’s rendering of the grand emotions, beauty and originality in Verdi’s score.
If maybe not the most revolutionary of interpretations, it is a good night out for those looking to enjoy musical italianità.
Performances run until 19 January 2025.
Michael Fischer