MASKED BALL • OPÉRA BASTILLE
★★★★☆☆
Photo: Benjamin Girette
REVIEW MASKED BALL PARIS: NETREBKO SHOWS HER CLASS
Supersoprano Anna Netrebko is the star attraction in the Bastille Opera’s revival of Verdi’s Masked Ball in Gilbert Deflos’ monumental, but also somewhat conservative, staging.
The 2007 production is visually impressive and definitely worth revisiting, but it also bears the mark of an aesthetic that has stood still long enough to gather dust in the corners.
Photo: Benjamin Girette
Netrebko is strong as Amelia and delivers a vocally convincing performance opposite American tenor Matthew Polenzani as Riccardo, the governor of Boston. Their tragic love triangle – Riccardo’s infatuation with his best friend Renato’s wife – causes political unrest, jealousy and fate to merge into a dangerous cocktail that drives the opera’s plot towards the inevitable murder.
Photo: Benjamin Girette
As you may already know, Un ballo in maschera is inspired by real events. In the 1770s, Gustav III of Sweden had depleted the state coffers with his warfare, and discontent among the aristocracy culminated during a masked ball at the Stockholm Opera, where the king was shot. Verdi mixed the story with a fictional love affair, but Italian censors still banned the killing of a monarch on stage for fear of copycats. Verdi had to move the action to Boston and let an English colonial governor take the bullet instead.
Photo: Benjamin Girette
In the role of the “woman in distress”, Netrebko displays her high class. In the great cemetery aria, she brings the house down with her vocal power and dazzling technique in poignant emotional crescendos that thin out into intense pain. The hall is filled with cries of “brava” from an enthusiastic audience.
Her voice may have peaked, but she is undoubtedly a diva with dramatic authority and a prima donna charisma that fills the room from the moment she steps in.
Photo: Benjamin Girette
The scenography is carried by monumental set pieces inspired by the Lincoln Memorial’s white neoclassical marble architecture, when Deflos’ aesthetics do not go black on black.
Photo: Benjamin Girette
Large choir scenes and Verdi’s magnificent music unfold with power and dynamism. It is visually beautiful, the audience gets their money’s worth – but it is all a bit old-fashioned.
The staging is so frozen that you feel like shaking it to see if something might happen. The singers stand nicely and sing to the audience as if they are waiting to be photographed. It is opera as tableau: correct, controlled and without surprises.
Nevertheless, the music lifts it all up. Verdi has a pulsating heartbeat of “true opera” that reminds one why the work continues to be here.
Photo: Benjamin Girette
A fine opera experience of high artistic quality, but not a production that overwhelms either the audience or tradition. Four stars from GOT TO SEE THIS.
