UN BALLO IN MASCHERA: No Beantown in this uneven production. |
It would be fun to report that in the same weekend Bostonians got to hear two operas from two different centuries that take place on their home turf: Scott Wheeler’s delightful The Construction of Boston and Giuseppe Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera (“A Masked Ball”). But we got only one, since Boston Lyric Opera opted to set the Verdi opera where Verdi intended it to be set, 18th-century Stockholm. Verdi and his librettist, Antonio Somma, had planned a new version of an old opera (by Auber) about the assassination of Sweden’s King Gustavus III, but Neapolitan and Roman censors imposed so many restrictions that they ended up choosing the farthest-removed and most exotic setting they could imagine: colonial Beantown! A British production in 1952 finally “restored” the locale to Sweden. Six years ago, Richard Conrad’s Boston Academy of Music did a lively Ballo in which conspirators Sam and Tom (America’s two “Uncles”?) plotted to assassinate the “governor” of Boston.
Wherever it’s set, Ballo is one of Verdi’s most brilliant works, dating from the rich if unsettled period just after his first three unqualified masterpieces, Rigoletto, Il trovatore, and La traviata. Unflagging in its musical inspiration, it’s also structurally sophisticated and musically refined and inventive. It’s all about light and shadows, and disguises in the midst of courtly elegance — so what better place for the climax than a masked ball? And the 18th-century setting gave Verdi the opportunity to parody Mozart: the dances are minuets; the plotters weave their plan to a sinister fugue. Verdi alternates between soaring legato arcs (the love music, the heroine’s outbursts of suffering) and punchy staccatos (the conspiracy fugues and two memorable ensembles in which the music depicts both jolly and sarcastic laughter — as when the conspirators discover that the veiled lady whom the king asks Count Anckarström, the king’s aide, to protect is none other than the count’s own wife).
BLO musical director Stephen Lord understands this perfectly, and among the pleasures of this new production (being shared with Opera Colorado and the Minnesota Opera, but we got it first) at the Shubert Theatre are his knowing and witty way with the contrasts in this score, his orchestra’s superb wind section (before Aida, Verdi’s most colorful writing for winds), and the outstanding chorus.
A regional company doesn’t have the resources to bring in big stars. (Sarah Caldwell got them because they wanted to work with a genius.) BLO has introduced some very good singers to Boston, though few have gone on, like Deborah Voigt, to have substantial international careers. Australian tenor Julian Gavin, as Gustavus, has a big, accurate, tensile Verdi voice, a little dry at the very top, but impressive. Baritone Chen-Ye Yuan, who sings Ballo’s most famous aria, “Eri tu” (his monologue accusing his wife of infidelity), won the opening-night audience more with his poignant sincerity and musicality than with his persistent vocal flutter and almost bleating high notes. Other audience favorites were coloratura soprano Heidi Strober as an unusually feisty Oscar, the king’s (male) page, and gutsy mezzo-soprano Nancy Maultsby as the uncanny fortune teller (who here gets her neck broken by one of the unusually mean conspirators). Bass-baritones David Cushing and Michael Callas are the bad guys.
