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OPERA REVIEW
March 19, 2005
Photos by David Ransom
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By Michael Zwiebach
You have to admire the faith of San Francisco Lyric Opera's artistic chiefs, Simon and Barnaby Palmer. In our age of near-despair over shrinking audiences for the classical arts, SFLO believes in the power of great operas to communicate to new audiences without much intervention. Just sing well and tell the story. Period. Unfortunately, Verdi's Un ballo in maschera (A Masked Ball), the latest SFLO production staged at the lovely Florence Gould Theater at the Legion of Honor on Sunday, is not that type of opera. It's nuanced, concise, unique, like all Verdi's operas from this point on. Ballo isn't just about what you think you see, it's about what you don't. It's about – well, it's about masks, in the literal and figurative sense. Both musically and dramatically, this production misses the essentials of Verdi's dramaturgy, leaving the job half done: it assembles all the materials of the opera, but fails to finish the job and make the opera live.
It is not a failure of any one individual part that mars SFLO's production. It is rather a lack of overall vision. Heather Carolo managed the traffic on the small stage and made the action comprehensible and clear. But what we saw in this production was a conventional love triangle: tenor hero (Gustavo, King of Sweden) loves the soprano (Amelia) who is the wife of the baritone (Renato). In a plot complication, we learn that Renato is Gustavo's best friend, and so Amelia fights against her love for Gustavo. As in an average melodrama, Renato discovers the guilty secret and joins a conspiracy to kill Gustavo, only to learn, once the deed is done, that there was no actual love tryst.
But Verdi went beyond this outline, hence his choice of a title. Gustavo's charisma and charm allow him to believe that everybody loves him. From the very beginning he responds to repeated warnings of a conspiracy with insouciant dismissals and denial. Why? Because, with the arrogance of power, he has decided not to allow his public position to impinge on his private diversions. He is all for parties, for going in disguise, with his whole court, to see Ulrica, an accused sorceress, do her act. He's not a bad guy, necessarily. He's Gary Hart or Bill Clinton.
It's because of Gustavo that Verdi brought so much comic music and so many lively, French-cut rhythms into his score. The King is flashy; so is his music and that of his page, Oscar. It's essential for a production of this opera to make that connection early and often. Otherwise, the depth and interest of the drama are lost, as they are in SFLO's production. Lyric's Gustavo was William Gorton, a singer unable to get across even a glimmer of the role's possibilities. His middle range was strained, the top notes unmemorable, and his tone and phrasing completely unvaried all evening long. He was unable to coordinate his singing dependably with the orchestra and Barnaby Palmer's conducting. He was also dramatically wrong for the part. He hasn't got the ready smile and ingratiating stage presence that are Gustavo's aces. He waved his arms and did the typical importunate lover thing, giving no sign of a specific characterization. None of the other principals was able to fill the gap, naturally. Duana Demus' Amelia was strong in the lower and middle registers, a bit raw and forced on top, but she handled the registral jumps in her part. Her singing was solid, if uninspired. There was no chemistry between her and Gorton, though she tried, and their Act II duet (in a graveyard, of all places), lacked tension. Nevertheless, she found the dramatic spine of the character and played it consistently.
Razvan Georgescu played Renato in stand-and-deliver style, and seemed half-asleep until his dramatic discovery of his wife with Gustavo toward the end of Act II. There he let out an "Amelia!" that ended in a groan, a very effective moment. He carried this intensity into Act III, but regressed during his aria "Eri tu," which seemed unmotivated and under-interpreted. In general his tone was a little warbly, though he hit some difficult high notes. He, too, seemed to lose connection with the orchestra and conductor at times. I don't understand why, in such a small theater, the actors can't sing to each other. Principals sang at the Exit signs all night. More eye contact would have done a lot to make the relationships real. There was no specificity of reference even in the solos. Where was the scaffold that dominates the scene in Act II? Demus didn't make it present for the audience and the subsequent apparitions that freak her out were similarly vague. The supporting roles were more strongly cast. Patrice Houston easily commanded the stage as Ulrica, singing with round tone and hitting the contralto low notes authoritatively. Fabienne Wood was an amusing Oscar, quite unlike any other principal in that she was engaged in the scene when she wasn't singing. Her two arias came off nicely. The chorus sang well, and related to each other naturally. The orchestra played its heart out, but Verdi's orchestral writing in this piece is just too expansive for a little band of fourteen. So the sweep of the love melody in Act II was lost, as was the complicated scoring of the final scene. Palmer's conducting was fine as to tempi and spot-on in places, such as his strict observance of the quiet dynamics in the pages just before the murder. With better singers, the musical side might have sounded more cohesive.
(Michael Zwiebach holds a Ph.D. in music history from U.C. Berkeley and lectures on music history at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.)
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Duana Demus (Amelia)
Patrice Houston (Ulrica)