United States Verdi, Un ballo in maschera: Soloists, Refrain and Orchestra of San Francisco Opera / Eun Solar Kim (conductor). Battle Memorial Opera Home, San Francisco, 6.9.2024. (HS)
Manufacturing:
Director – Leo Muscato
Units – Federica Parolini
Costumes – Silvia Aymonino
Lighting – Alessandro Verazzi
Choreographer – Colm Seery
ight director – Dave Maier
Refrain director – John Keene
Forged:
King Gustav III – Michael Fabiano
Amelia – Lianna Haroutounian
Renato – Amartuvshin Enkhbat
Oscar – Mei Gui Zhang
lrica – Judit Kutasi
Tom – Jongwon Han
Samuel – Adam Lau
Silvano – Samuel Kidd
Robust singing, energetic conducting by music director Eun Solar Kim and some dazzling visible moments mixed to make a certified success of Un ballo in maschera in San Francisco Opera’s 2024-25 season opener. It has been ten years since this opera, a high quality instance of Verdi’s mid-career prime, was final mounted right here, and it bears the composer’s magic for strong scene-setting for the orchestra and vocal writing that brings out the most effective in particular voices.
The story relies on a real-life eighteenth-century king of Sweden, a forward-thinking monarch who based the academy that also doles out Nobel prizes. He was a lot beloved by his topics, however he gained energy in a coup that left some nobles wishing him useless. A cabal succeeded in assassinating him at a masked ball. The opera interpolates a love triangle involving the king and the spouse of his confidant, and that sparks many of the juiciest music.
For her half, Kim continued a long-term challenge of conducting all of Verdi’s operas, a lot of it new territory for her. As in current seasons with La traviata and La forza del destino, she saved tempos shifting briskly all through and wrangled the often-tricky connections between the orchestra and the solid with care. Sometimes, the short tempo softened the music’s emotional affect however, thankfully, singers within the 4 lead roles delivered persistently lovely sound. For the massive moments, sopranos Lianna Haroutounian and Mei Gui Zhang, tenor Michael Fabiano and baritone Amartuvshin Enkhbat additionally ramped up their vocal characterizations.
As a clueless King Gustavo III, Fabiano sailed simply by way of the music, by no means pressured, and lavishing the lyric tenor line with polish together with a regal bearing that felt completely pure. As his love curiosity, Haroutounian, a perpetually frightened Amelia, paired nicely vocally with Fabiano. Each have excelled in starring roles at San Francisco Opera in recent times, though not collectively till this time.
Zhang as Oscar, the king’s web page, camped it up like an escapee from a French opéra comique, tossing in some anachronistic dancing as she sang and acted with vivid bounciness, her bodily presence meshing properly along with her silvery sound. She dealt with Verdi’s mild gymnastics with ease. Zhang made an affect in 2022 as Dai Yun in David Henry Hwang’s Dream of the Purple Chamber and Eurydice in Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice.
Making his firm debut and, for the primary time, singing the function of Renato, the king’s confidant, Enkhbat made up for some stiff appearing along with his resonant, milk-chocolate timbre, rock-solid intonation and a spotlight to the textual content. He delivered the well-known aria, ‘Eri tu’, with aplomb, one of many vocal highlights of the night. (His costume didn’t assist – a ridiculous blue uniform with gold epaulets, a yellow sash and knee boots that made him appear like a comic-opera clown.)
Mezzo-soprano Judit Kutasi, who made an enormous impression right here as Ortrud in final season’s Lohengrin, lent vocal weight and sly dramatic touches to an appropriately witchy Ulrica, the soothsayer who precisely predicts, in Act I, the assassination in Act III.
Aside from Oscar’s flamboyant black-and-white geometric-patterned outfits (and Renato’s uniform), the remainder of the costumes traded in boring colours and conventional seems to be. So did the units, and these decisions contributed to a depressing look total.
Director Leo Muscato’s simple staging, first seen at Teatro dell’Opera di Roma in 2016 and revived in 2019 at Teatro di San Carlo, was making its first look in the US. Fortunately, there was no try and impose a directorial idea, a uncommon factor in today of administrators with ideas. The manufacturing went decidedly old-school: some others have portrayed a romantic connection between the king and Oscar, taking part in off historians’ ideas that the real-life King Gustavo III was homosexual.
Designer Federica Parolini mounted the units on a revolving stage divided like a pie into sections. Whereas this smoothed out the scene adjustments, the hemmed-in house left little elbow room for a crowd, and in 4 of the seven scenes unimaginative blocking made for too many static moments. The rotating stage paid off, nonetheless, within the transition to the masked ball finale. The ballroom glided into place from the king’s personal rooms with out a pause within the music.
Lighting designer Alessandro Verazzi supplied some vivid visuals. Angular facet lighting and well-thought-out spotlighting created eerie shadows that underlined the spookiness and introduced emotional focus to the scene in Ulrica’s area. Comparable lighting created further depth for Gustavo’s reflective aria, which led to the ultimate scene.
Even higher was the setting in Act II for the gallows subject, outlined by a forest of bleak black bushes in opposition to rising wafts of dense vapor (fabricated from steam and liquid nitrogen) saturated with purple, magenta and yellow lighting. That scene was additionally musically and dramatically expressive, with Haroutounian and Fabiano creating some moments of actual rigidity and fervour.
There have been no weak hyperlinks in the remainder of the solid, all present or current Adler Fellows within the firm’s younger artists program. The refrain did its half with its typical precision, and a troupe of six dancers added splashes of colour and a few slinky aptitude to the celebration music within the closing scene.
This all counted towards a efficiency to be appreciated for its sure-handed tempo, drama and sound. Pretty much as good because the solo singers, refrain and orchestra had been, it may nonetheless come collectively higher to realize that exultant frisson that makes Verdi so thrilling when all of it works. There are six extra performances, by way of 27 September, to get there.
Harvey Steiman