EIF 26: Verdi’s A Masked Ball

Festival Theatre 26/8/26

Orchestra of the Zurich Opera House, Chorus of the Zurich Opera Hoiuse

Gianandrea Noseda conductor, Adele Thomas director

When the curtain rose on the First Act of Verdi’s opera, ‘Un Ballo in Maschera’, my heart sank, as we found ourselves watching a public autopsy in a university Forensic Science lecture theatre in Boston in the late 1800s. I supposed we were about to see another example of the modern fashion in opera of Regietheater, a transformation of the original composer’s wishes at the behest of an innovative theatre director, in this case the Welsh director, Adele Thomas. As the act progressed, the feeling that this great middle period Verdi tragic opera was being played for laughs, and also had had insufficient rehearsal time in the Festival Theatre, having been transferred from the Zurich Opera House, was overwhelming. Contact between stage and orchestra pit was shaky, and the balance between singers and orchestra was too favourable to the orchestra. However, as the opera progressed, this imbalance, both musically and dramatically, dissipated, and a splendid Festival performance took place, with an excellent cast and notable playing by the Zurich Orchestra, under the fine conducting of Gianandrea Noseda, Music Director of the Zurich Opera.

Verdi and his librettist, Antonio Somma, had enormous difficulties with the Italian censors about the plot, originally planned to recreate the assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden in 1792, and finally changing the whole setting to Boston in the late 1600s with Richard, Earl of Warwick, as the assassinated British Governor of Massachusetts. Adele Thomas has chosen to set the opera, still in Boston, but at the end of the 19th century, thus, among other things, allowing the costume designer, Hannah Clark, to dress the protagonists in Fin de Siècle finery, and in the crucial Masked Ball scene, to include Folie Bergère outfits!

What then of the singers? Zurich have brought two casts to Edinburgh for four performances, and I saw the First Night. It was a very international cast, and indeed Swiss singers were few in number among the soloists. At the head, as Riccardo, the Earl of Warwick, the American tenor, Stephen Costello started slowly but gradually grew into his role, which is one of the most demanding of Verdi’s heroes. Tall and athletic, he commanded the stage, although left largely to his own devices by the director, who, I felt, spent more of her time on the big crowd scenes and less on the intimate passages between Riccardo and Amelia, who, certainly in their big duet in Act 2, displayed little chemistry together. Amelia was sung, very well, by the Russian soprano, Elena Stikhina, revealing a fine Verdi voice, with impressive top notes and an excellent cantilena, also singing in a hushed mezza voce when required. Her role, as the wife of Riccardo’s confidant, Renato, and secret but honourable lover of Riccardo himself, is a tricky one to pull off, but I became more and more impressed as the evening wore on.

Renato was sung by the Slovak baritone, Dalibor Jenis, who possesses an impressive if somewhat unsubtle voice, and acted well as the third part of the love triangle, reacting with anguish, rage, sympathy and jealousy whenever called upon to emote. The fortune teller, Ulrica, was played by another Russian, the mezzo Yulia Matochkina, demonstrating excellent Verdian singing and pouring out layers of melodrama when required!

I always find the travesty role of Oscar, Riccardo’s sort of PA in this production, an anomaly, a coloratura soubrette lost in the wrong opera, a comic character in the middle of a tragedy, but he was sung engagingly by Rebeca Olvera nonetheless. Some of the best singing of the evening came from the American bass, Brent Michael Smith, who brought warmth and style to the secondary character of Samuel, one of the conspirators. A singer to watch.

The whole proceedings were controlled by Gianandrea Noseda, who, after sorting out early balance and contact problems, gave us a well-thought-out reading of Verdi’s score. It’s not his finest, but there are many wonderful moments. The Zurich Chorus was excellent and the dancers superb, and we stumbled out into the Edinburgh night pretty satisfied.