The Spectator - February 08, 2018

BOOKS & ARTS

Opera

Accentuate the negative

Alexandra Coghlan

Un ballo in maschera
Leeds Grand Theatre and touring until 24
March

A chaste act of adultery and a silent conver-
sation: these are the encounters at the heart
of Un ballo in maschera. On paper Verdi’s
opera is a hot-blooded political thriller cli-
maxing in a regicide, but in the watching
it’s something entirely other. Just like the
buoyant score, whose ‘aura of gaiety’ seems
so at odds with the dark subject matter, the
drama of Ballo is a sustained act of misdirec-
tion. The focus in this unusual piece is not
on action and event but on absences, unspo-
kens — the negative and not the photograph
is what absorbs Verdi so compellingly here.
When the Italian censors, troubled by the
on-stage assassination of a king, famously

rejected Ballo, it was to misunderstand a

drama that, for all its political trappings, is

essentially domestic, emotional. It’s an error

that Tim Albery’s new production for Opera

North — the first in the company’s history

— perpetuates.

Restoring the libretto’s original Swedish

setting and characters (Scandi noir avant la

lettre), Albery and designer Hannah Clark

beckon us into the smoky bars and blood-

ied interrogation rooms of the 1940s. Men

are kitted out in a uniform of homburgs and

belted macs, while Patricia Bardon’s Ulri-

ka is a Marlene Dietrich-alike, wearing a

beret and an inscrutable expression. It’s all

perfectly serviceable, but historically awk-

ward. How we are to align the opera’s war-

ring factions and its benign ruler with this

new milieu is never addressed or explained

— a rickety structure on which to build any

real tension.

So many dramatic corners are left rough

and unfinished. Is Tereza Gevorgyan’s effer-

vescent Oscar a young man who cross-dress-

es for the masked ball, or a woman who

favours male dress for her day job as the

king’s secretary? Who precisely is tortur-

ing and being tortured in Gustavus’s all-for-

giving kingdom? In an opera whose plot is

already busy with blind alleys and narrative

dead-ends (the Ulrika business so central to

Act I leads nowhere) any further uncertain-

ties are just a distraction from the emotional

encounters that matter.

And that’s surely the measure of a good

Ballo. If all is working as it should, then the

climax of Act II — Amelia revealing her

identity to her husband in order to save his

life, knowing it seemingly implicates both

herself and his dearest friend as adulterers

— should be a moment of such horrifying

emotional clarity and truth that all other

details are swept away. The charged silence

of these two figures set against the serrat-

ed jollity of the Laughing Chorus is one of

In Tim Albery’s production, one of

opera’s greatest dramatic moments is

rendered blunt and inert

Ball breaker: Opera North’s production of Un ballo in maschera

CLIVE BARDA