The final scene in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera invites stage directors to dazzle their audiences with a sumptuous masked ball. The public at this new production was duly dazzled, in the best of taste, and not just by the scintillating golds and pinks of the ball gowns. The opera’s original libretto was inspired by the real-life assassination of Gustav III of Sweden in 1792, but Verdi was constrained by the censors to steer clear of regicide. For the world premiere in 1859 he relocated the action to Boston. The production team at the Hungarian State Opera has opted for the European context, recreating the court of an 18th-century enlightened despot in a glittering ballet of changing colour palettes. Musically, things were less scintillating. Michelangelo Mazza conducted the house orchestra with rhythmic energy but little dynamic refinement and the singing was variable. However, the performance’s biggest shortcoming was the lack of rapport between the lead singers as actors.
Director Fabio Ceresa gives an interesting slant to the love triangle. Instead of the king’s secretary, Renato is his portrait painter. His admiration for his patron turns into murderous fury when he discovers that Gustavo is having a platonic affair with his wife Amelia. Gustavo, usually a reckless, joke-loving monarch, is an insomniac plagued by worries, which include his dangerous enemies. He is haunted by two masked, winged figures – one black, one white. They personify the twins Hypnos and Thanatos – Sleep, which eludes him, and Death, which ultimately grants him the rest he seeks. Although their meaning would probably not be obvious without reading the programme notes, these splendid apparitions tie into the interplay of darkness and light, portent and levity, that permeates the score. Ceresa also plausibly alters the fortune-teller Ulrica’s cure for Amelia’s infatuation with Gustavo. The obscure herb Amelia is supposed to collect at midnight is opium. Renato catches his wife with her lover in a lavish, amber-draped opium den, teeming with addicts and attendants in rippling pastels. What marvellous work by set designer Tiziano Santi and costume designer Giuseppe Palella!
Not all of the singers being credible actors, some of Ceresa’s ideas could not be fully realised. The emotions between the three protagonists failed to ignite. A restless, ardent Gustavo, tenor Attila Fekete was the only one to keep his passions on a constant boil. His Amelia, Eszter Sümegi, fluctuated from warm to cool, with long stretches of tepid in between. Lying down in an opium haze suited her cautious movements and her torment during the love duet was convincing. However, having to recline on a sofa during her beautifully controlled “Morrò, ma prima in grazia” resulted in some awkward squirming. As Renato, baritone Alexandru Agache moved awkwardly. After some obligatory portrait-smashing, he summoned genuine, thundering rage for his big aria, “Eri tu”, but threw away too many of his other lines for his character to come alive. Non-acting did the death scene in. While Gustavo bled out, Renato hung his head in moderate dismay, as if he’d just mislaid his cobalt blue instead of shooting a reigning monarch. Sümegi just stared on, looking gorgeously aristocratic. Ceresa also failed here by not having the chorus, who sang superbly, react to the murder more believably as individuals.