San Francisco Opera: Un Ballo in Maschera

I was at the opera house last night for the second-to-the-last performance of the San Francisco Opera's season opener, Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera. I love this opera & the production was superb. Even with two intermissions & a couple of those disruptive pauses between scenes ("Please stay in your seats during this brief pause" but of course some people can't resist pulling out their phones, because . . . they're so very important that 30 minutes can't go by without checking for all those very important messages?), the three-hour performance time flew by, thanks to the vigorous cast & the propulsive yet sensitive conducting of Music Director Eun Sun Kim.

The production (directed by Leo Muscato, set design by Federica Parolini, costumes by Silvia Aymonino, & lighting by Alessandro Verazzi) is both gorgeous & psychologically apt. Without going full-on Fritz Lang, the stage & the shadowy, jagged lighting seem influenced by German Expressionism: the sets are often soaring yet cramped, pushing people close to the front of the stage (which has the additional musical charm of helping project their voices outward into the auditorium); the costumes are colorful & aristocratically elegant but the surroundings are dark; the second-act setting near the gallows spot, with black trees jutting irregularly across the stage, is made vivid by swirling mist in changing colors, some of which (red) are cued to the emotional moment, others of which are just strange & shifting (I loved the effect but will note that a friend of mine found it distracting).

The court world portrayed here is frivolous & shallow, though with dark currents of treachery & resentment simmering underneath; Gustavo/Riccardo seemed a close cousin to the charming & heedless Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto. When he, urged by his page Oscar, decides to check into the soothsayer Ulrica's trade personally before agreeing with the Chief Magistrate's degree of banishment, he suggests the party visit her with music that is irresistibly lively, & indeed most of the courtiers start bobbing up & down to the music, moving their arms in rhythm, ready to dance at what is clearly another goofy escapade in the light atmosphere of the court – except the conspirators don't dance along; they stand, a solid & noticeable mass, glowering off on one side of the stage. It was a wonderful moment, as the audience (OK, maybe just me) can hardly keep from dancing along in their seats to this music. Movement of the stage pictures is used well throughout; when we come to the climactic masked ball, the set rotates, startlingly, for the first time all evening, & the stage is suddenly much brighter & deeper than at any other time during the show. (The climactic masked ball, but hasn't the whole show been a masked ball? No one here is without disguise, or masked motives.)

It doesn't do this performance justice to say this is what we want in Italian opera; it's what we dream of: the passion, the precision, the wild strength. The main conspirators, Adam Lau as Samuel/Count Ribbing & Jongwon Han as Tom/Count Horn. are, beneath their murmuring, their suspicions & their suspiciousness, implacable in their pursuit of vengeance, the granite rocks on which the swells of the frivolous court smash & break. Mei Gui Zhang as Oscar is gorgeously attired in black & white, with stylish juxtapositions of various stripes & checks, & a hat with a very tall plume, like an exotic bird that is also a faithful reader of Vogue. His exquisitely spritely music embodies the surface light-heartedness of the court, floating beside, reflecting on but never quite comprehending the darker contrasting currents.

As Gustavo/Riccardo, Michael Fabiano is all strength & careless charm. You can see why the people say they love him, but also how he could have created some dangerous enemies. The silver spangles rain down on the ball-goers as he expires. (There were some extra-musical groans & exhalations during his death that I would have preferred not be there, but that's a matter of personal taste.) Lianna Haroutounian is a compelling & sympathetic Amelia, & Amartuvshin Enkhbat as Renato/Count Anckarström is powerful as a good man redirected into enmity by perceived betrayal; both he & Amelia seem so much more thoughtful & conscience-stricken than the king that you can see why they belong together. Gustavo/Riccardo ultimately does the noble, Brief Encounter-type thing, but it takes him a while to get there (& you can see why such insouciance has its appeal to Amelia).

Judit Kutasi, so memorable as Ortrud in last season's Lohengrin, is similarly towering in the somewhat similar role of Ulrica/Madame Arvidson, the fortune-teller in touch, or so she claims, & so some of the authorities believe, with Satanic powers. She brought an interesting theatricality to the role that made it seem that whether or not Ulrica was actually communicating with unearthly powers, she was certainly aware of how to impress upon her audience that she was well worth the money they gave her. (She makes a brief & striking appearance in the finale of the masked ball, once it is clear that her prophecies have all, in the way of stage prophecies, come true.) The smaller roles – Christopher Oglesby as the Chief Magistrate, Samuel Kidd as the vivid sailor whose questions to Ulrica about his ultimate rewards are instantly answered by the disguised king, & Thomas Kinch as Amelia's Servant – are all strong. (As you can tell from the character names, this production uses the Swedish rather than the colonial Boston setting, though honestly . . . to me it doesn't really matter much.)

As usual before the opera began, we heard the recorded voice of company director Matthew Shilvock welcoming all those people who are attending the opera for the first time. This always attracts a big round of applause; I'm not quite sure why. Perhaps it's a case of more rejoicing in Heaven over the one straying sheep that is rescued rather than the 99 that have been there grazing all along, but maybe some day he will also thank those of us who keep coming show after show.

The woman who checked her phone during the first pause (she & her husband also spoke a bit during the performance) left at the first intermission, which was fine with me (& also with the woman on the other side of them, who moved over into their vacated seats, to get a better view of the stage). Speaking of views from the stage (I was in Orchestra A1), I usually pay more attention to the stage than the pit, even in the front row, but it was wonderful to notice how much the harp adds to both the playful music associated with the Court & with Oscar in particular & also to what I'll call the heavenly apotheosis music as Riccardo lies dying (according to the program, Annabelle Taubl is the Acting Principal Harp, but I'm not sure she's the woman who was playing last night).

During the third act, a woman a few rows behind me started an endless rustling with some sort of plastic bag (I will never understand why people wait until the music starts to do things like that -- take out what needs to be taken out during intermission, people!). The woman behind me swiftly & unobtrusively went over & whispered something & the noise (mostly) stopped. During the second intermission I thanked the woman for doing this. "Oh, I'm hardcore," she replied. "You know what the problem is? It's these stupid women with all of their shit. You can check it for free, I don't know what's going on! The woman behind me is doing the same thing" – & she turned around &, murder rising blood-red in her eyes, glared at the woman. I'm not sure the other woman noticed, but maybe the message got through. Such is life in Operaland.