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OPERA REVIEW
February 15, 2003
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By Barbara Baker
We weren't sure, watching the West Bay Opera's production of Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera last Saturday, if it mightn't be a comedy. Either the climate was very damp or the stage mist at the beginning of almost every scene was intended to convey that we were not in Sweden or Boston, but in a not quite real place like Avalon. In the opening scene the king, sung warmly by Christopher Campbell, is seated on his throne in plain sight behind a thin curtain. The courtiers sing his praises until the page, played by a tall soprano named Arden Kaywin, announces that the king is coming and opens the curtain. Voila! The king's clothing doesn't quite fit, and while handsome enough, he doesn't seem very kinglike.
Then, in the mist-covered second scene when the gypsy fortune teller Ulrica, sung by Donna Olson, announces that she has successfully summoned the devil (“He's here!”) and suddenly flies up into the air, we're sure. Definitely a comedy. We're so charmed and impressed by her powers of levitation, her mysterious green lighting, gnarled and bent attendant and impressive singing that we feel we might also like to have our fortunes told.
In the gallows-field scene, where Amelia, the wife of the king's confidant, is searching for an herb to cure her love for the king, there is a body still hanging from one of the trees. When Amelia sings that he's looking at her, his eyes very cutely light up. Comic touches continue through to the final scene where the costumes at the masked ball include a grim reaper and an angel who comes to stand over the king just as he is dying.
This is still Verdi's oom-pah period, and the occasionally out-of-tune orchestra added to the sense of innocent merriment. In early and middle Verdi the true character of the music must be created through the carefully developed Italian legato of the singers with very little help from the orchestra. But there were no Italians in this production and very little sensitivity to Italian phrasing. The opera was ably conducted by Alexander Katsman, a Russian, who was good with ensemble work, but did little to help the singers stretch their phrases in the legato passages. There was still quite a lot of good singing. Karen Anderson came the closest to Verdi's musical intentions with her intense and clearly tragic portrayal of Amelia, the wife of Count Renato, dramatically sung by Michael Rogers. All were definitely up to the daunting task of singing Verdi, with the best work done by Christopher Campbell, a dramatic tenor with excellent high notes. Should he make an effort to understand Italian legato better, he might be astounded by how well this would pay off for him. The sets, by Jean-François Revon, a regular designer for the West Bay Opera, were in an antique style that sometimes only suggests the setting. Most effective were the cave and gallows-field scenes, while the castle scenes were too bare to suggest royalty. They perform in the Lucie Stern Community Center, which only seats about 400 people and has a tiny stage. Use of the space available, especially in the crowd scenes, was excellent and a credit to the director, David F. Ostwald.
(Barbara Baker holds the Doctor of Music from Indiana University plus degrees from Sacramento State, and was herself formerly a singer.)
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Karen Anderson (Amelia), Christopher Campbell (Riccardo)