Metropolitan Opera Review: 'Un Ballo in Maschera' Production is a Circus With King Gustavo as a Clown

This review is for the performance on Tuesday November 27, 2012. 

Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera is one of the more interesting works in the master's oeuvre. It showcases the first time that the tragic genius of Verdi incorporated comic elements into his work in order to create a duality that is non-existent in the majority of his operas. But to clarify, Ballo is in no way a comedy. Like Shakespeare's plays, it is laden with comic moments, but the story still revolves around the tragedy of a king who exceeds his grasp when he fails to restrain his love for his best friend's wife.

Director David Alden expressed an interest in balancing the comic and the tragic in his new production, but it seems that he was more preoccupied with trying to experiment with a number of incoherent ideas than truly creating a dynamic and riveting drama. The result is nothing more than a circus with its central characters as nothing more than cardboard clichés and clowns. As the opera opens we are greeted with a rather imposing painting of Icarus falling from the chariot. The symbol is clear: Gustavo is a king who pushes past his own limits and betrays his best friend. This ultimately leads to his downfall. There is also a chair on stage right which presumably represents Gustavo's office and will be a distracting symbol that ultimately becomes more important to Alden than his own characters.

The Icarus curtain rises and a metallic set appears with an identical backdrop of Icarus all the way upstage. As the night progresses, this image will rotate up and down time and again for no more reason that to distract from the proceedings on stage. Gustavo heads upstage and Oscar comes in dressed as an angel and starts to fidget with his wings as the orchestra prelude drives to its foreboding climax; is he trying to tell Gustavo something? Who knows, but it was a rather comic counterpoint to such dramatic music. As Gustavo sings his "La rivedra nell'estasi" some of his butlers move about the stage in circular fashion, for no discernible reason, before exiting through the doors in the wall on stage left. Moments after that aria comes to an end, the butlers come back in with a five or six desks. When the desks came out, I couldn't help but ask why they weren't there from the start? The only explanation I could come up with was that Alden wanted to keep the staging moving non-stop. Otherwise it served no dramatic or symbolic purpose and became an unnecessary distraction. As Oscar sings his defense of Ulrica all the judges and butlers suddenly started grasping one of their hands as if possessed. Why? Maybe to add another silly touch to the staging. During the "Ogni cura si doni al diletto" in which Gustavo announces that they will head to Ulrica's, the butlers came back to serve some drinks, creating a massive clutter on stage. Oscar starts to dance a can-can which looked strange with all the mess of people around him until finally the rest of the chorus decides to join in a moment that comes off as rather silly and out of place.

The ensuing scene only added to the circus-like atmosphere of the first as Ulrica, dressed up like a middle class woman, sits down at some desk while a bunch of people circle around her. Some look possessed, but there is no real understanding of where we are or what is actually going on. Ulrica's text tells us that she is invoking the spirits, but she is just sitting around looking rather lost and confused. The sailors come in and we get a fight between two men for a prostitute that is likely meant as an obvious nod to the central plot, but it distracts from the interactions going on in the foreground. If this is the case, then is Alden implying that Amelia is a prostitute? Gustavo sits in his chair, which is inexplicably on set, and Amelia comes and carries her own chair over to sit near Ulrica; another moment of unintentional comedy. During the fisherman song, Ulrica gets piled up in the middle on top of some desks, while all of the King's men circle her in bright yellow rain coats and umbrellas. At the end of the Act, the pandemonium reaches its height as the people lunge at the king repeatedly as if possessed before he is draped in his regal garments and brought to a pedestal. But inexplicably, a mannequin version is brought just seconds later and the people gravitate toward that one even though the King is still standing there with crown and cape on. Alden may be trying to say that the people will follow anyone wearing the right garments, but it still makes no sense that the live person is still wearing his royal garments and the people choose to ignore him and run after a non-entity. Why not take the king's garments off to make the symbol clearer?

Act one contains the lightest sections of the work and I thought that with the drama turning more serious in Act 2, the circus would come to an end and the concentration on the drama would elucidate us into Alden's philosophical pretenses. Unfortunately, the opposite happened and it became increasingly difficult to take the opera seriously as it moved toward its usually riveting finale. As the Icarus curtain rises on Act 2, Amelia is seated (in a chair) in a graveyard. Why there would be a chair in the graveyard continues to baffle me, but Alden decided that no chair in this scene would somehow be a detriment to his symbol. There are some tiles removed to emulate tombs which are decent minimalist representations. Amelia gets up from the chair, puts on the veil, walks about with her hands in errant movements and then takes off the veil strangely. Gustavo comes in and the minimal clutter makes for a more coherent and concentrated drama. Everything seems to be falling into place until the conspirators show up and then the pandemonium of incoherencies return. Suddenly, a bunch of conspirators (who want to kill the king) come out of the open caskets in the ground. Yes they represent death, but why do they not come out of the tomb when Gustavo is standing right there defenseless? Why wait until he has run away to come out and reveal themselves? Obviously the libretto dictates when the conspirators come out, but Alden should have tailored his ideas to fit the text than create a "cool" idea that strikes one as illogical in the context.

The first scene of Act 3 is the low point in the production, which is rather unfortunate since it is probably the most dramatic scene of all. For once Icarus is out of sight and the chair is covered in the shadows on stage right. This set is rather small, claustrophobic even, but the same distractions permeate this scene to detrimental effect. A panel upstage swivels up and down every time someone needs to enter or exit the scene. What is wrong with keeping it open? Or why is there no door for people to exit from like in most normal rooms? After all Alden did establish doors in the walls in Act 1 so doors are clearly part of his visual grammar for this production. There is also a portrait of Gutavo on stage left and a different chair on stage right. At the start of this scene, Renato (Count Anckarström) throws his sword while Amelia pleads with him. Then he picks it up before throwing it again moments later. Then he walks over to the portrait and chucks that as well as a shocking flash of light occurs. I was not sure if it was glitch or intentional. Eventually a similar cue made it clear that it was intentional. The panel finally decides to rise and in come the conspirators to decide who gets to kill the king. They sit the portrait upright by the chair, but keep the image away from the audience. Throughout their exchange Count Horn kneels over continuously and studies the picture. Everytime this happened I started to dread if they would start scribbling and drawing smiley faces on it. During the quartet Horn starts ripping out paper inexplicably from a notebook in schizophrenic display and then my worst fears were realized. During the ensuing quintet Horn walks over to the portrait, studies it once more, and then starts swiping at it frantically. I thought he was slashing it to pieces, but then he brought it to the center of the stage (front still turned away from us) and as the act concluded he turned it toward the audience to reveal a black eye, a massive mustache, and a bunch of scribbles all over the face of the king. Why didn't they do a smiley face also (or a joker smile while we're at it)? To add insult to injury, Renato puts on a skull mask to indicate that he will kill the king (as if the text was not clear on this point already). At that point, I heard audience members around me laughing and I was unable to take the remainder of the opera seriously at all.

The final scene once again brought down the Icarus curtain. It rises moments later to showcase another one up stage. That one is also raised and suddenly another one comes down and hang over the stage for the remainder of the opera. Chorus members dressed up as demons arrive and Oscar comes out as an angel again. Women started to make sexual innuendos to the empty chair until the butlers came back to pull it away once and for all. Could it possibly have symbolized Gustavo's reign? It is certainly plausible. The problem is that Alden imposed its presence on the audience more than was necessary to get the point across.

The biggest issue I had with the production was that it came off as an incoherent mess. The Icarus symbol turned out to be nothing more than a superficial reference that really said nothing about the drama or its central character (aside from the obvious that I already mentioned).Alden riddled his production with so much campiness and cliché that I started to question whether he even liked the opera or if he was just trying to deconstruct it and show off how flawed he thought it was. The monochromatic color scheme was interesting and the wardrobe was solid, but Alden spent way too much time indulging in an endless of number of fruitless ideas that were shortly abandoned in favor of new ones that met with the same fate. What was the purpose of Oscar as the angel and the conspirators as demons? To emphasize the obvious idea that Oscar is good and the conspirators evil? Why not do some role reversal and have Oscar as the demon and the conspirators as angels? After all one could argue that Oscar's frivolity was a bad influence on the King and that the conspirators believe themselves to be the good people trying to restore peace to the kingdom. That probably would not figure into Alden's plans either as the production ultimately reveals little about his symbols or Verdi's drama.

Many might state that I simply do not like new productions, but I would like to set the record straight and mention my tremendous affinity for the new Robert LePage Tempest production as well as the Willy Decker Traviata production which Alden seemed to try to emulate, but ultimately could not.

If the production was a circus, then Gustavo was the central clown and there was nothing that Argentinian tenor Marcelo Alvarez did vocally to help matters. Alvarez's middle voice is absolutely beautiful and has a warm, bright Italianate color. However, as he enters his passaggio, the voice loses its brilliance and takes on an arid complexion. To compensate, Alvarez would repeatedly take pauses right before higher notes and then accent them in almost shouting manner to give the semblance of brightness. During the fisherman song "Di tu se fedele" Alvarez wove delicate and elegant rhythmic phrases until he came to the passage "l'averno ed il cielo I rati sfidar" which rises to an A flat. He took a pause two notes before the high note and then drilled the two high notes unconvincingly. This same pattern was repeated every time Verdi called for a climactic note (which happens quite often for the role of Gustavo). The result was consistently choppy and predictable phrasing throughout the night. During Gustavo's intimate moment right before the masked ball, the King rejoices at seeing his beloved Amelia one last time in the famous passage "Si rivederti Amelia." Verdi gives the tenor a series of arching phrases that climax in a B flat and A natural. Alvarez pushed the B flat, took a deep breath and then placed a forced accent on the ensuing A natural on the words "d'amor mi brillera." After hitting the final A natural, he took another breath and accented the ensuing G natural just as hard, in a moment that lacked any emotional transcendence. Alvarez did fortunately sing well in the two duets with Sondra Radvanovsky and had a particularly poetic moment when he uttered the words "M'ami" in sotto voce right before the duet's second part.

Alvarez's greatest shortcomings came as an actor however as he seemed to try too hard to be funny in the first half of the work. He kept making silly faces and would move around awkwardly during the Fisherman scene. During the "E scherzo od è folia," he implemented frenzied movement to the point that I expected him to start dancing. At this point in the performance, I was hoping for him to stand still and simply resort to the now maligned "parking and barking" style of golden age opera. During the Act 2 trio, he jerked his arm around when Amelia told him to leave her. It looked like a child not getting what he wants and was not befitting of any king, frivolous or not. Fortunately, Alvarez stopped moving around as much in the final scene and it added the dignity to the monarch that had been lacking throughout early portions of the performance.

Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky brought a more effective dramatic portrayal of the heroine Amelia. The tone of her voice is rather coarse and often sounds flat, but she wields it to rather dramatic effect. Despite the silly movements that Alden subjected her to in her first aria "Ecco l'Orrido Campo," Radvonovsky's massive voice brought the requisite torment and suffering to Amelia. Her climaxes were gut-wrenching as her luminous voice rose over the lush orchestra. However, her finest moment in this aria was the final prayer in which Radvanovsky sang softly with a suave legato that ascended to a plea of desperation on the high C. During the ensuing love duet, Radvanovsky sang well with Alvarez, but had a show stopping moment in which Amelia sings "Ma tu nobile, me difendi dal mio cor" in which she implores the King to protect her integrity. Radvanovsky sang these phrases tenderly and gently, but with a certain hint of sensuality as she took off her jacket. Her second aria "Morro ma prima in grazia" was easily the most spell binding moment of the entire evening. Radvanovsky sang most of the aria quietly, making the dignity of Amelia in her most critical hour all the more heart breaking. She sang the second part of the aria mezza voce almost creating the effect of crying as she lay on the floor. This made the climactic cadenza at the end of the aria all the more powerful as she started the high C pianissimo. She slowly built a sublime crescendo that at its apex came off as a massive cry of pain.

Baritone Dmitry Hvorostovsky brought a dignified portrayal of the betrayed friend Count Anckaström/Renato. Save for the throwing around of swords and paintings, his famous "Eri Tu" brought the same emotional pathos of Radvanovsky's previous "Morro ma prima in grazia." His rugged baritone had a brutal snarl as he declared his decision to kill the king, but during the ensuing passage in which he laments his lost love, his voice became lighter and had a sweeter color. Verdi gives the baritone some ornaments at the apex of certain phrases and Hvorostovsky caressed each one of these to moving effect. His High G natural was full of deep sorrow and during the cadenza at the end of the aria, he seemed to let out a muffled cry on the high F that brought the aria to a rousing finish. At the end of the opera, Renato gets one solo phrase to express his regret at killing his best friend. Hvorostovsky sang this brief moment with complete commitment that redeemed Renato.

Stephani Blythe sang her first Ulrica of this run and practically stole the show in her brief moment as the witch/charlatan. As aforementioned, I had no idea what to think of Ulrica's character, but Blythe did a tremendous job of creating a dark horrifying portrait with her powerful voice. She was phenomenal at both areas of her range and at the end of her double arias, she walked off stage to sing the final low G on the word "Silenzio." Blythe's voice was chilling and created an icy feeling in the theater that will not soon be forgotten.

Kathleen Kim was solid as the page Oscar and her bright and flexible soprano created a strong impression. I do wish that Alden had made Oscar more of a character and less of a silly cartoon. During her "Oscar lo sa, ma non dira" she started doing a robotic dance that made her seem more like Olympia from Les Contes d'Hoffmann (she did sing the role a few years ago). David Crawford and Keith Miller sang splendidly in the roles of conspirators Horn and Ribbing, but the production made their characters into stereotypes rather than humans. Crawford was turned into the greater culprit as he was forced to thrash the papers about and scribble on the King's portrait.

Conductor Fabio Luisi held everything together with a measured and swift reading of Verdi's score. Anyone who has seen Luisi conduct knows that polish and clarity as his two best characteristics and they were on full display Tuesday night. During the love duet, the violins get a ricochet figure that hints at the gentle breeze Gustavo is singing about. It is usually lost in the harp arpeggios and plucking of the lower strings, but Luisi made sure to bring this figure out. It added strong contrast to Amelia's subsequent line which does not have the violin figure. Luisi also brought the opera to a rousing conclusion musically as he built the gorgeous chorus to an earth shattering climax.

As the opera comes to an end, the chorus utters the words "Notte d'orror" which translates to "Night of horror." The words could not have been more fitting for how Alden's production managed to turn such a moving tragedy into a middling farce. If the Trovatore earlier this season and the more recent Aida performances were celebrations of the 200 year old Verdi's genius, Un Ballo  was the complete opposite. I would like to commend the singers for doing their best to salvage the musical integrity of this circus that was masked as an opera. 

Other Opera Reviews By David Salazar

Aida (November 23,2012)

La Clemenza di Tito (November 20, 2012)

The Tempest (November 7,2012)

Le Nozze Di Figaro (October 26, 2012)

Il Trovatore (October 17, 2012)

Otello (October 16, 2012)

L'Elisir D'Amore (October 5, 2012)

Carmen (September 28, 2012)