San Francisco Classical Voice

Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera is such a great work, it's a puzzlement that so many writers as well as opera goers focus on where the production places the opera, America or Sweden. When as well performed as it was by the San Francisco Opera Tuesday, attention turns to the musical substance, the music's realization of the drama. That's all that really counts, why we're there, what opera's about.

There it was again, the finely structured acts traveling like long arrow flights unerringly towards their marks, the summational ensembles, each one more stirring than its predecessor. There were the arias beautifully characterizing the personnage, the moment, the drama.

Four out of five principals up to the job are enough. Richard Margison as Gustavus III (aka Riccardo) sang that tenor role possessed by the character's conflict between a great but hopeless love and duty and friendship. His tenor rang true, utterly Verdian in style and Italian in sound. After a vocally troubled Act I, Carol Vaness emerged into a clear sky, her soprano warming into its familiar dramatic potency and clarity, her singing and portrayal conveying Amelia's fear/strength, love/devotion, passion/nobility beautifully.

Unexpectedly, the Russian mezzo-soprano Elena Zaremba as the seer Ulrica (Madame Arvidson in this production) turned the flagging Act I on its head. Her singing simply dominated the drama, her voice slicing through the house with concentrated energy or enveloping all with its earth-mother depth. This was a real figure, as Zaremba's acting signalled the spiritualist's sympathies, awarenesses and very human dread of reality--unlike Ulricas who come off as simply arrogant and convinced of their infallibility.

The opera's struggle to get going until Zaremba took hold was a divided responsibility. Vaness, her voice tremulous in the higher range, couldn't float the grand line of the prayer "Consentimi, o Signore," lunging at the top note. The conductor, Donald Runnicles, was unsure of Act I, trying wrong remedies like speeding up the codas past the point of no musical returns. Although his control and dramatic sense was sure and fired up the rest of the opera effectively, in this first act he lost the elasticity of phrasing and melodic arcs that are crucial to Verdi and Italian opera. He is able achieve that and does, but it's learned and doesn't come instinctively and therefore consistently.

In Act I also, the director Roman Terleckj encouraged Tracy Dahl to overplay Oscar the page, for example, treating the Chief Justice with outrageous impudence. Indeed Dahl, who played Oscar here in 1990, could negotiate the crystal-studded coloratura while doing cartwheels, entrechats and fouttes, but to exploit her fluency (also in Act II in the "delivery of the ball invitations" aria) with a distracting show is vulgar. Dahl's singing and energies were captivating anyway.

In this fourth revival of the company's 1977 production, Terleckj seemed to follow production book with skill, managing the large groups well. He didn't in any case, get through to Sergei Leiferkus, who made the opera's pivotal character, Renato (Count Anckarström), into a villain and menace from the outset. The intensity of his voice, with its mannered sound (and diction), painted Renato as an enemy rather than trusted friend and counselor in the first aria and cavatina, "Gia questa soglia...alla vita che l'arride." The Leiferkus voice is big and powerful, his appearance handsome, but as to the variety in Renato's later torment or any conflict, forget it. Just not an intelligent performance, missing something bigger than himself.

John Ames and John Relyes (the conspirator Counts Horn and Ribbing) performed very creditably, and so did the cast and chorus. The great and lasting impression, overriding any flaws, was of grand singing by Vaness and Margison and glorious ensembles, with Vaness' and Dahl's voices soaring on top in as thrilling a symbol of spirituality or love as there is in opera.

This 1977 John Conklin production is very colorful and handsome and looked as fresh as new, touched up, no doubt, and utilizing some new costumes. As should be apparent by now, the story takes place in Sweden, Verdi's first choice, which didn't get around the Italian censors of his time. Sweden is a much more satisfactory setting than the original compromise imposed on the work, Massachusetts during the Revolutionary War period, but it might as well be set in Naples or Milan, which would really be truer to the style and language. Once more, sing and play Ballo this well, and the locale doesn't matter all that much.

(Robert P. Commanday, the editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.)

©1999 Robert P. Commanday, all rights reserved