The fashion parade of European directors that seems to pass as artistic policy for Kaspar Holten’s regime at Covent Garden reaches a new nadir with the latest production there. Katharina Thoma, who, as Glyndebourne regulars will remember to their cost, was responsible for Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos last year, has been recruited to direct the Royal Opera’s new Ballo in Maschera.
That’s using direct in the loosest possible meaning of the word, for very little that can be seen on stage during this depressing evening suggests that the singers have been given the direction they badly need. The acting is rudimentary, sometimes risible, the blocking of the chorus clumsy. Having set her Glyndebourne Ariadne during the second world war, Thoma locates this Ballo somewhere in Europe (the Balkans?) in the period leading up to the outbreak of the first world war, and then opts for the Boston version of the score, which Verdi was forced to sanction when his original, centred on the assassination of Gustav III in Sweden, fell foul of the censors.
Nothing on stage explains either decision. There are very few ideas, none of them interesting. There’s a lot of cemetery statuary in Soutra Gilmour’s dreary sets, some of which comes to life; the fortune-teller Ulrica (Marianne Cornetti) becomes a medium, with a hunchbacked assistant straight out of Hammer casting, while among all the turn-of-the-century uniforms and dresses, Serena Gamberoni’s Oscar gets a powdered wig and breeches.
In the circumstances it’s hardly surprising that there’s nothing subtle about the musical performance, despite the pedigree of the cast. As Riccardo, Joseph Calleja lumbers around, never singing anything below mezzo forte; Dmitri Hvorostovsky is on autopilot as Renato, while Liudmyla Monastyrska sings well but never suggests who Amelia really is. Gamberoni is easily the best of them, though the relationship between Oscar and Riccardo is never explored at all.
Daniel Oren’s conducting doesn’t set the world on fire either, though he could have been expected to get the ensemble more precise than it was on the first night.
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