Met Opera: Un Ballo in Maschera

This article was originally published on my Typepad blog on November 13, 2012

In an interview in the program notes, David Alden, the director of the new production of Un Ballo in Maschera at the Met Opera, asks: "But do people know what this opera really is and the madness within this piece -- the danger within it, and also the almost schizophrenic layering under the realistic surface?" While I give Alden every credit for sensing the madness that underlies many of Verdi's great operas and also for removing this particular work from its ridiculous Boston locale, I think he has gone too far in his attempt to uncover these schizophrenic layers. The disparate expressionist elements which he has created have in the end little to do with Sweden, Verdi or even each other. The opening of Act I seems to be set in the lobby of midtown bank while the first half of the third act appears to have appropriated a leftover set from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. In the end, especially in the final masked ball scene with its crazily tilting floor, these elements become more a distraction to the audience than an enhancement to the production.

But in opera the staging is always secondary to the music itself. And Un Ballo in Maschera, no matter what its setting, is one of Verdi's great operas. He wrote for it some his most haunting arias, both for solo and multiple singers. The music for Act II is among the most beautiful he ever composed. And, of course, there is throughout his mastery of the chorus that would reach its apogee in Otello.

In the performance I heard last evening, the music was well served, not only by Fabio Luisi's able conducting, but by the lead singers as well. In particular, Sondra Radvanovsky, was wonderful in the role of Amelia and repeatedly drew thunderous applause from the audience. The Argentinian tenor Marcelo Alvarez was every bit her equal in his performance as Gustavo. And Dmitri Hvorostovsky, whose baritone has anchored so many of the Met's productions, at times threatened to steal the show as Anckarstrom. Certainly his knife thrust at the finale was convincingly real.