Falling flat
Michael Tanner
Un Ballo in Maschera Royal Opera House Everyone agrees that Un Ballo in Maschera occupies a unique and uniquely distinguished place in Verdi’s oeuvre. It has elegance and passion, suffering and exuberance, in a precarious balance which is unlike anything in any other of the mature works, and which Verdi couldn’t have attempted much earlier than he did. The most obvious comparison is with Rigoletto, but there the strongest scenes are between father and daughter, as so often in Verdi, and there is nothing that can be called a developed love duet, whereas in Ballo we have Verdi’s most overwhelming declaration of passion, at the climax of the Act II duet between Amelia and Riccardo, where the words ‘Si, t’amo’ are torn out of Amelia in a moment of nearly unbearable intensity, anguish and ecstasy combining.
At Covent Garden there are so many things wrong with the new production that at least one can rejoice that that passage got its due, from the singers and the orchestra, which wells up here in a way most uncharacteristic of Verdi. And the audience can’t applaud here, however much they might like to, since the music immediately carries on, though in a vein of what I find to be unfortunate jauntiness. At the end of the duet, however, they made up for it on the first night by clapping and yelling for minutes, while Marcelo Alvarez and Karita Mattila remained locked in a wildly implausible embrace, his lips directed somewhere down on her right shoulder.
The amount of audience participation at Covent Garden is becoming a matter for serious concern for anyone who cares for opera as drama. Every aria in Ballo was greeted with gusts or storms of applause, and while the singers froze one can’t help wondering whether, if this goes on, they won’t soon be singing encores. That seems unlikely, but as it is continuity is ruined, the thing turns into a costumed concert, and the acting limitations of the performers are brought into sharper focus as they have to attempt to resume their precarious identifications with their roles. It would be a good idea if there were an expressly stated wish on the management’s part for applause to be confined to the end of scenes or acts, but, given the nature of the people who can afford most of the seats, that seems to be unlikely.
Which makes the hiring of any produc ers at all almost unnecessary, and certainly the intrusive ones that Covent Garden favours. Mario Martone has chosen to set the opera in approximately Civil War America, though whatever the period chosen the action is hopelessly implausible. The sets by Sergio Tramonti are monumental, perhaps accounting for the fact that the central act of 33 minutes is an oasis in two intervals of half an hour each — it’s impossible to treat the work dramatically under such circumstances.
Once again, however, singers direly in need of direction are left to stand and deliver, which is the only thing, it seems, that Marcelo Alvarez can do: his Riccardo is indistinguishable from his Werther earlier in the season. He appears not to be able to sit in a chair without looking uncomfortable. Apart from some moments of ardour, his performance was drastically unstylish. He has no air of aristocracy, nor of the heroic nonchalance which defines Riccardo. Thomas Hampson is even less distinguished, all the more puzzling because he has a lovely voice and could have an impressive presence. Anyone who has heard him talking about music knows how shrewd he is, yet it never translates into compelling artistry. Renato, prey as so many of Verdi’s baritones are to love and misery, nobility undermined by vengefulness, comes across from Hampson as nothing more than a cipher with a truly great aria to sing in the last act. As the object of both men’s passion, Karita Mattila’s Amelia is much more moving and convincing than either of them, yet even she seemed ill at ease. Her high notes were sometimes worn, the grand Verdian sweep lacking. All these stars seemed over-parted. But with the Ulrica of Elisabetta Fiorillo we come to the incomprehensible: her performance fell so far short of the merely competent that one wonders what policy led to her employment. Minor roles were well cast, and the Oscar of Camilla Tilling had the right degree of precocious camp to persuade us that s/he had a distinguished future ahead after puberty, as a lover of any high-ranking person who took a fancy to him.
I wonder why Antonio Pappano’s conducting of Verdi so often leaves me unsatisfied. There’s no doubt that he is more at home here than with Wagner, but in get ting superlatively responsive playing from the orchestra he seems to produce results of unsuitable sophistication. Even in this opera, with its courtliness and elegance, there needs to be an elemental quality, and a bitingness which I never heard, not even in ‘Eri tu’, that noblest Verdian aria, which fell flat on all counts. In the closing minutes, as the refined dance music puttered to a halt and Riccardo sang and gasped his last, things almost seemed right. That was too late, however, to redeem another evening where the strongest impression was of mediocrity.
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