Un ballo in maschera

“The most operatic of operas”

The opera Un ballo in maschera, which Gabriele D’Annunzio called "the most operatic of operas," still has a somewhat problematic identity to this day: censorship altered its setting (from the Swedish royal court to Massachusetts) and the status of one of its main characters (replacing King Gustav III with a fictional English colonial governor), in hopes that the work’s ideological content would not provoke anti-monarchical political sentiments. None of this affects the essence of the music, and even a reconstructive staging does not significantly alter its core. Great, theatrical passions collide: the oft-tested conflict between love and friendship intensifies, and the dynamics of rationality and irrationality, fate and chance, race headlong toward tragedy. Ulrika’s irrational and exotic character becomes the embodiment of inevitable fate: her role is pivotal even in the ensembles (see, for example, the trio “Che v’agita così?”). Renato is especially well crafted: the transformation of the self-sacrificing, concerned friend into an enemy is also reflected in the beautiful ebb and flow of vocal tone changes. The musical intensification of the growing conflict between husband and wife is also compelling. Amelia’s erotic wavering is magnificently counterbalanced by the wildly romantic, horror-like setting, particularly in her aria that begins with “Ecco l’orrido campo”. The gallows hill grows into a bizarre symbol of sin-leaning existence and inevitable retribution. In Verdi’s work, fearsome irrationality appears both externally and internally. This is balanced by humour: and this is not only thanks to Oscar’s overly forward, fussily undramatic character (“Volta la terra,” “Saper vorreste”), but also to the insertion of comedy that resolves the heightened dramatic situation. A brilliant example of the latter is the laughing quintet (“È scherzo od è follia”), which resolves the tight situation: here, a multitude of emotions melt into harmony – Amelia despairs, Renato is shocked and ashamed at once, and the conspirators’ laughter is pure mockery and lewd schadenfreude. The libretto’s mixed metaphors are also often mocked, which mostly stem from the logical misalignments between different sensory domains (for example, one character hears the traces of cruel footsteps). Oskar Kokoschka also designed sets for the opera.

Zoltán Csehy

Character development in the opera

“The management deletes or adds lines at will, as if to say: ‘You're the composer, hammer your notes around this... What? You've already written the piece? So what? Stretch it, shorten it, twist it – it'll be fine... We want music, we want your name, to make you our accomplice in deceiving the poor paying audience! Drama, common sense? Come on, nonsense!’” Thus raged Verdi against the practices of the leadership of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, who, out of fear of censorship, tried to force a whole series of changes from the Maestro and his librettist. In the end, Un ballo in maschera didn’t even become Naples’s production, but even in Rome some of the original ideas had to be sacrificed – most notably the identification of the main tenor role with King Gustav III of Sweden. However, the Gustavo in the opera has just as little to do with the hyperactive and hyper-unpopular Scandinavian monarch as Robert Rich, 2^nd Earl of Warwick, has with Riccardo, the protagonist of the opera set in Boston. And while we are right to condemn such external pressures and interventions, it is worth noting that Verdi himself later believed that the changes ultimately benefited Un ballo in maschera.

In any case, more important than the setting and character names is the impressive character development of the opera's tenor hero. Riccardo/Gustavo progresses from a naive and almost adolescent joy of life, through the cheerful role-playing of his costumed escapades, all the way to wise renunciation and near-death forgiveness – thanks to his experience of a reciprocated but unfulfillable adult love. It is, in effect, a true operatic Bildungsroman, whose protagonist initially shows (generational) affinity and connection primarily toward the page Oscar. Some analysts believe this stage relationship may hint at King Gustav III’s historically more or less documented affections, though such an interpretation is likely reading too much into it. Moreover, even without this layer, directors and dramaturges face a host of intriguing questions. For instance, why is this excellent young man so hated, even within his own court, despite appearing on stage with words of praise, reward, and responsible care? Or how are we to interpret the relationship between Amelia and Renato, which we only see in its fateful collapse? And what are we to make of Renato’s practically boundless admiration, which turns into equally extreme, murderous hatred toward his master and friend?

Ferenc László

The director’s concept

For us Italians, Verdi is like your grandfather: you do not choose to love him or not, you just love him, no matter what. We owe our identity as Italians to Verdi’s music. Its influence extends beyond art and music history to the entire history of Italian society, and thus the way we define ourselves as Italians. He started writing music during the revolutionary era that brought about the creation of Italy. It was thanks to his choruses in Nabucco and I lombardi that Italy united under a single idea: national unity. Verdi is special, and you cannot help but love his music to the point of madness. Moreover, Un ballo in maschera is a work of his mature years, when Verdi was already “Verdi” and was writing in the capacity of “the prophet of the people”. He knew what he wanted to write and what effect the music he was writing would have on the hearts of the Italian people.

The work was originally entitled Gustavo III before becoming Un vendetta in domino and, finally, Un ballo in maschera, with several re-writes of the plot. Obviously, Verdi was very much interested in the political dimension, as he was interested in politics in general: he took an active role in society. But what mattered to him most was to have librettos that had a strong appeal. In Verdi’s time, to see a king dress up like a commoner and go to the den of a sorceress and then to visit a cemetery at night to meet a woman on her own, these were all highly transgressive elements. He knew that these elements would affect the audience, hitting a nerve at a social level. This is the same reason why La traviata was so revolutionary: because it put on stage the exact same stratum of society as the one that was there in the stalls, watching the production. It was something new. All the feelings that were earlier stereotyped and transposed into some sort of timeless ahistorical setting Verdi put in “real time”, so to say. Dangerously close to the spectators. Thus, they felt that the work was speaking to them, and consequently more involved in the story.

The wonderful thing about Verdi is that there are so many other important aspects present in the storytelling and the musical composition: love, betrayal, difficulties in couple relationships, the need for honesty in a friendship... If you look at the three main characters, this could be a stereotypical operatic love-triangle: the tenor and the soprano love each other, and the baritone is in the way. The great revolution in Ballo is the fact that there is a relationship between the tenor and the baritone as well: a very strong friendship. Apart from examining the relationships of love and friendship, I prioritized some other aspects of the storyline, because I believe there are still many details we can shed light on even in case of an opera as well-known as Ballo. In this respect, I find the emotional arc of Gustavo very interesting: he is not only a man of power, but also a human being with feelings. For me, it’s important to see how he connects the two parts of his personality: he cannot decide freely as a man because of his duties as king, and he cannot decide freely as king because he has “human” feelings. This makes him a very complex character. Amelia is also divided between the roles of wife and lover. But the most interesting psychological development takes place with Renato, and we really wanted to show that in this production: his transformation from a sensitive and fragile man to a murderer. We show him as an artist who has an idealized image of Gustavo. As the court painter who makes the official portraits of the king, he meets him every morning for a ten-minute sitting, but he cannot completely capture the essence of the king in the picture because he doesn’t know him completely. Getting to know the human side hidden behind the facade of the man of power: this is the key element in analysing the role of Renato.

I like the idea of the friendship being born through art. But the way the artist’s profes-sion was perceived then was very different from the importance it has today. Gustavo, being the typical sovereign of the Age of Enlightenment, recognises Renato’s indisput-able talent, but the rest of the court consider him to be a servant, basically, except perhaps for Oscar – whom we portray as a very young and clever young man. So, I believe that Gustavo’s friendliness toward Renato is not “in spite of” his profession, but because he can see beyond social differences and really treats him as his equal. Although Gustavo treats Renato as his equal, Renato can never completely relax: he can see the human qualities, but cannot entirely dismiss the thought that he is essentially the embodiment of an institution. This is what he repeatedly mentions in the first part of the opera: “Your life is important; it belongs not only to you, but to an entire nation. Saving yourself means saving the nation.” But after the change in the second act, he can only see the man, and not the king. It all turns into a human revenge story based on pure passion. And only at the moment when he kills Gustavo does he realize that he has committed the exact same offence that he was warning him of before: he has killed not only the man, but the king as well.

Another important theme comes from the experience of having visited the Imperial Palace in Vienna. In the chambers of Emperor Franz Joseph, his bedroom was adjacent to his office, because he used to get up at 5 am to get all the correspondence and reading done in time for the first meeting at 6.30 or 7. What a nightmare! I am sure that a personality such as Gustavo – who is just as involved in public life as Franz Joseph was – must have extreme difficulties with sleeping. I see Gustavo as an insomniac who wakes before the alarm rings, despite being in desperate need of some more sleep. There are two entities that keep the king awake. We have represented them through two “angels” who are actually the projections of Gustavo’s tired mind: the white and black angels associated with sleep and death. These apparitions haunt, or, if you like, guide Gustavo’s actions in this dreamlike state between sleep and wakefulness.

The notion of sleep is carried over to the second scene, that of Ulrica. Hypnosis was really only developed in the second half of the 19^th century, but even before that, there had been a technique called “mesmerism” – named after the doctor Franz Mesmer. This is the age when alchemy turns into chemistry, and magic becomes science. But these changes are still ahead of us, so we cannot know whether Ulrica is a scientist or a fraud. The “orrido campo” scene also follows this train of thought. Here, the state of disengagement comes from opium – a chemical substance that acts on an organic level in the body. And then we arrive at the last instance in the opera when body and soul are detached: the moment of death itself. In the end, the peace and quiet that Gustavo has searched for in sleep, hypnosis and drugs will be found in death. In ancient Greece, the gods of sleep and death were twin brothers, Hypnos and Thana-tos. Two identical figures: one with white wings, the other with black ones. The effects of sleep and death on the human body – as the ancient Greeks already understood – is practically the same: except one is temporary and the other permanent. This is the main inspiration behind the representation of the angel figures. But we went a step further and integrated the notion of psychopomp – a word borrowed from ancient Greek that literally means “the guide of souls” – the entity that accompanied the newly deceased over to the afterlife, helping with the transition from life into death. Each religion has/ had such a figure: Anubis in ancient Egypt, Kharon in ancient Greece, and the angels in the Christian tradition. What we aim to examine is the duality present in the characters, in their relationships and in this grey area between sleep and death. And how this duality is present in the choices we all make, as well as in the actual act of making a decision.

Fabio Ceresa