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An excellent cast and smart, engaged direction make for an auspicious season launch in San Francisco Opera’s production of one of Verdi’s most sophisticated creations.  

An attractive supporting cast isn't sufficient to bring this revival of David Alden's Ballo in maschera to life in New York. 

Conductor Ivan Repušić leads a successful revival of Verdi’s playful masterpiece, with a solid cast.

Gaitanou’s direction of the singers is so exact that it becomes impossible to separate them from their characters.

An impressive performance of Verdi's masterpiece Un ballo in maschera based on of the original libretto.

Musically, WNO gets it right. Straightforward brilliance is the order of the day, and plenty of it.

Grange Park Opera’s enjoyable new production of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera looks a little homespun on stage, but has plenty of musical compensations.

The acting was patchy and the singing ranged from serviceable to laudable in this dazzling new production at the Budapest Spring Festival.

If you had received an invitation to a masked ball at which there turned out to be no masks and no dancing, it's understandable you'd feel disappointed. 

A dark minimalist inspiration for Vincent Boussard’s co-production of the Boston version of Un ballo in maschera, returning to the Gran Teatre del Liceu after 16 years.

The National Theatre opens its new season with a Verdi favorite short on substance but lovely to hear.

That both the lead and a second key role were ill and couldn’t sing did not bode well, yet this performance of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera shook up the house nonetheless.

Leonardo Capalbo makes a successful debut in Tobias Theorell’s minimalistic production of Un ballo in maschera in Stockholm.

People who claim that opera is nothing more than a glorified pantomime would have their prejudices confirmed at Deutsche Oper Berlin's Un ballo in maschera. This is, however, high praise. It’s an evening of camp entertainment, not a philosophy lesson.

Young Russian coloratura soprano Maria Nazarova gets the Oscar. 

Midsummer Opera took to the stage of St John’s Waterloo for a vivacious performance of Verdi’s tragic Un ballo in maschera, celebrating their 30th anniversary season.

While it may seem perfectly formed for the full grand opera treatment, Verdi's classic Un ballo in maschera can also work extremely well on a small scale, as shown by this intimate and compelling treatment by Timothy Nelson at Iford. 

The Birgitta Festival is an interesting annual venture put on by the city of Tallinn, and in 2014 it completes its tenth year. The festival is held in the ruined Convent of St Birgitta, set back from Tallinn Bay and on the banks of the River Pirita. 

Love and death, jealousy and revenge, assassination and intrigue, culminating in a dazzle of song, dance, and a shower of sparkling gold: San Diego's A Masked Ball has it all.

The Canadian Opera Company’s update of A Masked Ball to the 1960s, Kennedy-era Boston, while problematic, is actually based on Verdi’s experience of staging his first production a hundred years earlier. Verdi’s score flows right into the heart, and Adrianne Pieczonka is irresistible.

“For some operas,” famed conductor Carlo Maria Giulini once said, “you can accept a voice of not absolute beauty – if it is well used and he is an artist and interpreter, it will work. But for Verdi you need all this plus the essential sound.

“I would ask what the management’s drama has in common with mine. The title? No. The poet? No. The period? No. The place? No. The characters? No.” This excerpt from Verdi’s legal proceedings against the management of San Carlo, who were trying to foist changes on Un Ballo in Maschera, came vividly to my mind last night at Sydney Opera House.

Verdi experts regularly name Un ballo in maschera to be one of his finest works. In spite of this, it’s never reached the heights of popularity of La Traviata or Rigoletto, so a new production by an acclaimed director for a major opera house is a notable event. We watched David Alden’s New York Ballo from the comfort of a London cinema under the Met’s Live in HD series.

Read our review of David Alden’s production of Verdi­'s Un Ballo in Maschera in its 2012 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York. 

“Hate breeds hate.” I cannot possibly count all the times that I have heard this alarmingly true statement during my entire lifetime be it from my parents, mentors, or other individuals that I have encoutered. Indeed, this statement has proven too true countless times throughout the history of mankind, becoming a perennial favorite theme for artistic works ranging from novels to plays.