Class 4: "Un ballo in maschera"

Handout Chart of Act II Return to Index

4. Un ballo in maschera. Historical Fiction. The climactic event of Verdi’s Ballo in maschera (1858), the assassination of the Swedish King Gustavus III at a masked ball in 1792, may indeed have been an historical event, but it order to make an opera of it, Verdi and his librettist Antonio Somma had to invent a wholly fictional romance between the King and the wife of his best friend Count Anckarstroem, turning him from ally to bitter enemy. Add to this the prohibition by the censor against showing a monarch in unflattering light, and the consequent relocation of the opera to colonial Boston, and you get a farrago that is certainly more fiction than fact.

Against this, you have the composer in total command of his formal means, building large structures in carefully controlled increments, and writing some of his best tunes. We also see him trying new experiments with introducing comic devices into a tragic plot, to produce a true—if underperformed—masterpiece.

Other resources will be posted immediately after class.

Handout Class Script

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Q AND A

Who conducted the performance we saw today?
I was wrong in puting this down as James Levine, although he did conduct at least one other Met Ballo with Pavarotti. The conductor in this performance was Giuseppe Patanè, an Italian conductor of most of the Verdi opera standards, until he collapsed mid-performance in 1989 and died.

What can you say about the Amelia, Katia Ricciarelli?
According to Wikipedia, she was born near Venice in impoverished circumstances in 1946, and struggled in her youth. Nonetheless, she was only 23 when he made her professional debut as Mimi in La bohème, and was singing at La Scala and around the world before she turned 30. Judging by her discography, she was the go-to soprano for Verdi roles throughout the 1970s; this Ballo in Maschera is the last one listed. After that, she seems to have moved into support for promising new singers. She is still alive.

VIDEO LINKS

No luck whatsoever in finding a You Tube version of the 1980 Met production with English titles. I do however have the complete production un-titled, and have cued it to the clips we watched in class. And I do have two options with English titles: a vintage 1975 production from London in traditional style with Domingo and Ricciarelli, where the titles are huge and obtrusive, and the more recent (2012) Met production by David Alden. The latter is actually my favorite; it is a clear video with a fine cast, but you have to be willing to accept an updated production with some surprising (though interesting) directorial concepts. [Note that about an hour's worth of extra stuff has been tacked on to the end of the London video; I'm not sure where it comes from.]

AS SEEN IN CLASS
	Met 1980	Complete (Pavaroti/Ricciarelli/Quilico) Opening chorus End of I/i Amelia in I/ii Act II complete
PRODUCTIONS WITH TITLES
	London 1975	Complete (Domingo/Ricciarelli/Capulcilli)
	Met 2012	Complete (Alvarez/Radvanovsky/Hvorostovsky)


IMAGES
The thumbnails below cover the slides shown in class, though there may be a few small discrepancies. Click the thumbnail to see a larger image. Click on the right or left of the larger picture to go forward or back, or outside it to close.