Un Ballo in Maschera, Royal Opera House, review: 'leaden'

The stench of mediocrity was inescapable in this production of Verdi's masterpiece, says Rupert Christiansen

Liudmyla Monastyrska as Amelia and Dmitri Hvorostovsky as Renato in 'Un Ballo in Maschera' at the Royal Opera House
Liudmyla Monastyrska as Amelia and Dmitri Hvorostovsky as Renato in 'Un Ballo in Maschera' at the Royal Opera House Credit: Photo: Alastair Muir

"I consider Un Ballo in Maschera to be the composer’s major work, his masterpiece.” Such was the gauntlet thrown down by Gabriele Baldini, one of the most stimulating and perceptive of commentators on Verdi’s oeuvre, in tribute to the score’s consummate elegance, purity of musical language, and balance of sparkling insouciance and palpitating romance.

But despite all the wonders of the music, modern directors have struggled to make something plausible out of the plot’s creaking melodrama. The generous-spirited fun-loving bachelor ruler Riccardo falls in love with Amelia, the wife of his right-hand man Renato. Although she honourably resists his advances, Renato assumes the worst when he finds out about the liaison, and in revenge joins a conspiracy to assassinate Riccardo at a masked ball. Nobody’s behaviour seems real or consistent, and even by operatic standards, the audience is required to swallow some pretty bizarre turns of event.

In Verdi’s time, the censors insisted that the originally intended setting of 18th-century monarchical Sweden be transferred to the more safely distant 17th-century colonial Massachusetts, and since then the opera has been transported into all manner of territories in search of a location which can bring it into focus.

Recently Calixto Bieito’s pants-down, pistols-out version at ENO scandalously turned it into a cheap film noir, while at Covent Garden Mario Martone pushed the action into the American South during the Civil War. Neither scenario convinced, and nor does this leaden attempt, clunkily directed by Katharina Thoma and drably designed by Soutra Gilmour, to paint it in the context of the Austro-Hungarian decadence before the First World War.

The result is mere window-dressing, which does nothing to clarify motivation or illuminate personality. Turning the character of the clairvoyant Ulrica into a spiritualist medium and bringing funerary statues to life in a graveyard are gestures which have no basis in the text. The blocking of movement sinks to am dram standard, and the chorus is left clueless.

What really scuppers the show, however, is the inept acting of the three principals who go through the motions without generating a spark of erotic or psychological tension. Joseph Calleja may be the most likeable and open-hearted of tenors, singing here with his usual free and easy glow, but his Riccardo is just a Teddy Bear. Dmitri Hvorostovsky, a notch or two below his best vocally, phones in an off-hand performance as Renato, while the staid and matronly Liudmila Monastyrska is content to make a gorgeous noise as Amelia, sadly devoid of consonants or any apparent notion of what she is singing about.

Costumed in ill-fitting Cherubino breeches, Serena Gamberoni (a late substitute for Rosemary Joshua) sings acidulously as the page Oscar; Marianne Cornetti is a forthright Ulrica, and Anatoli Sivko and Jihoon Kim briefly make their mark as the dastardly conspirators. Daniel Oren conducts suavely.

Period frocks and an absence of the clichés of contemporary opera production ensured that the Gods spared this show the now customary first-night drubbing. But the stench of mediocrity was inescapable, as Verdi’s masterpiece emerged dead boring.

Until 17 January; www. roh.org.uk