Unmasking illusions: San Francisco Opera’s Un ballo in maschera mirrors life’s motley

“Dell’amor più desto è l’odio” (Hate is quicker than love), sings Renato in the opening scene of Un ballo in maschera. Though referring to the dangerous conspiracy poised to strike down his beloved king, who ignores his warnings, the observation unwittingly predicts Renato’s own behavior at the opera’s climax. Unforeseen consequences – hidden truths masquerading, as it were, within more obvious ones – are laced throughout Verdi’s 1859 opera. They contribute to Ballo’s unique tinta as a sophisticated, multi-perspectival assessment of human passions and their contradictions. As in Shakespeare, the comic is inextricable from the tragic.

San Francisco Opera has launched the company’s 102nd season with a deeply engaging production that admirably balances musical and dramatic values. This Ballo marks the US premiere of Leo Muscato’s staging, first presented at Rome Opera in 2016 following the director’s first-hand research on site in Stockholm into the historical sources of the story. Muscato opts for the original setting of the Swedish court in 1792 that inspired Verdi to write Ballo (using an adaptation of a pre-existing French libretto) – though, somewhat confusingly, several of the names from the later Boston setting are retained. 

Regardless, any sense of period drama is supplanted by an almost mythical focus on what drives these characters: Gustavus’ desire to do the right thing, as an enlightened king and in his love for Amelia, his best friend and minister’s wife; Amelia’s own compulsion to thwart her deep attraction to the king; the need to know what lies ahead that lures the people to the – here, highly theatrical – soothsayer Ulrica; and, as an ever-present, ominous background, the urge for vengeance on the part of the conspirators who loathe the king.

Federica Parolini’s cramped sets with their intentionally shabby effects, presented via a revolving stage, bring home the close connection between the personal and the political in this strange court, a connection made all the more vivid by the superlative SF Opera Chorus. Together with Alessandro Verazzi’s remarkably imaginative lighting schemes, the look of this Ballo veers into Expressionism in Ulrica’s scene on the waterfront and, with a kind of hallucinogenic effect, in the second act, of gaseous vapors continually shifting hues amid the apocalyptically desolate hellscape where Amelia seeks the herb needed for an anti-love potion.

The first-rate cast is headed by company favorite Michael Fabiano as a sympathetic King Gustavus who idealism corresponds to his lack of concern about the dangers surrounding him. Fabiano breathed yearning, lyrically glowing power into Verdi’s soaring lines, nowhere more so than in his glorious duet with Amelia and his third-act aria “Ma se m’è forza perderti”.

Soprano Lianna Haroutounian made a splendid counterpart with the enveloping warmth of her Amelia. Comfortably and intuitively shaping her arcs of melody, she added depth to the character by injecting a palpable sense of guilt-ridden despair, even to the point of seeking salvation from the diabolically connected Ulrica. Muscato clarifies the interpersonal tensions of Verdi’s cast, underscoring that their grand passion has remained internalized, never consummated. 

Making his company debut, baritone Amartuvshin Enkhbat delivered an impressive vocal portrayal of Renato with his formidable bronze-tinted baritone; his dramatic interpretation, however, remained too one-note, focused on suspicion and, eventually, spite. In the one overtly “conceptual” bit Muscato inserts into his staging, the king and his minister are shown during the Prelude as friends since their youth, ironically engaged in a fencing pose as their mutual friend Amelia, Renato’s future wife, paints their dual portrait. But the connection between him and Gustavus, sometimes interpreted as a repressed gay bond, came across in general as wooden. 

Judit Kutasi’s white-haired Ulrica sang with thrilling resonance and depth, giving a clear sense of her effect on her audience – a canny performer whose showbiz manipulation generates Dickensian comic sparks. With her airy but exquisitely detailed coloratura and perfectly timed physical acting, Mei Gui Zhang’s Oscar seemed a combination of Puck and Ariel, revealing the page to be the king’s truest friend. 

SFO’s production marks the latest installment in the company’s initiative to present music director Eun Sun Kim leading major works by Verdi and Wagner each season. (She’ll embark on her first-ever Tristan und Isolde in the Paul Curran production in October.) Kim showed terrific sensitivity to the detailed colors of Verdi’s score, flexibly adjusting to the singers. She allowed English hornist Benjamin Brogadir and cellist Evan Kahn to cast a spell in their respective solo turns. If at times at the expense of the space and resonance needed for Verdi’s melodies to fully bloom, Kim favored generally flowing tempi, generating reliable excitement.