Verdi : Un Ballo in Maschera
Chorus and Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera, New York
Fabio Luisi
Having witnessed more than one of David Alden's assaults upon opera over the last 3+ decades, I was prepared for the worst with this new production of Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera from the Met. It was, in the end, not as terrible as some of the things my (occasionally lurid) imagination had envisaged. However, from the first over-choreographed movements of the choir, I found myself thinking "Monty Python", and never really quite disengaged from that thought for the rest of the evening. If you know what I'm talking about, you'll get the picture without further description. If not, I'm afraid I'm not up to the task of putting it into other words. Apart from Act 2 (which is mostly the duet between Gustavus and Amelia) this was over-stylised, over-the-top, and often frankly ludicrous. Ballo is difficult enough as it is, frivolity contrasting sharply with intense passion, it didn't need any more shovelling to be done by the director. The modern (well, roughly late 20s) dress added nothing in particular, and the sets, though quite striking, ended up giving me something of a headache, with their skewed parallels and foreshortened perspectives.
Fortunately, there were the soloists. Marcelo Álvarez was bouncing around a little too much, but I have to admit he's weathering the vocal shift into a heavier repertory quite successfully, and there was a good deal of very nice singing about his Gustavus, especially in Act 2. Hvorostovsky seemed woefully under-used here - it's an indication of how imbalanced Ballo really is, looked at objectively, that the tenor's on-stage and singing 85% of the time, while the others get their fifteen minutes and not much else - but what he did was done beautifully, as you would expect.
Sondra Radvanovsky (Amelia) and Stephanie Blythe (Ulrika) displayed very similar characteristics, a full, warm, rich, thrilling timbre allied to a strong stage presence, though I would have liked some clearer diction from Radvanovsky. Nevertheless, she remains one of the few sopranos who can comfortably negotiate both the heights and the depths, not to mention the vocal ornamentation, of this role without ever losing a grip on the character. Stephanie Blythe walked off with her one scene triumphantly, a magnificent, staggeringly confident interpretation that left you seriously wishing she had more to do. Finally, Kathleen Kim was an excellent Oscar, bright and mischievous, though saddled, poor girl, with a ridiculous 'tache and goatee that looked so fake they were about to fall off any moment. That she managed to sing at all, with that kind of distraction, was already admirable, much less do as well as she did. You wonder what directors are thinking sometimes. Similarly, Radvanovsky was required to do far too much singing while prone on the floor, or three-quarters of the way there, which can't have been remotely comfortable, never mind easy for her. And she said in her interval interview that Alden was allowing her to be still?
That we were blessed with a first-rate group of soloists (and even the comprimario roles were rock-solid) largely offset the somewhat stilted chorus (I can't blame them, considering what they were being asked to do physically), and some very neutral playing from the orchestra. Fabio Luisi is the new Music Director at the Met, and it does, of course, take more than conducting skills to fill such a role for a major opera house. I daresay the reasons for his appointment are solid enough, but looking at it from the outside, he seems an indifferent replacement for James Levine. Competent enough, certainly - the orchestra was playing correctly, the ensembles were good, tempi were clean and crisp, the whole was musically cohesive, but that extra spark was not there. In the second act, at the moment of Amelia's declaration, the orchestra descends into a hushed tremolo of violins, and then the cellos sing out with the love theme, while the soprano enunciates so simply, "Ebben, si, t'amo"; it's a moment of pure magic that should catch the breath in your throat. Not tonight; the orchestra was merely making the right noises, and nothing more. A great pity, when I know perfectly well that band is capable of so much more, given the right direction.
[Next: 12th December]
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