The man behind the mask
Recently your doyenne engaged in an email-based interview with David Alden, director of the Met’s new production of Un ballo in maschera, opening on Thursday. Unusually for your doyenne, she did almost none of the talking—or, in this case, typing—because Alden is very nearly as good a raconteur as he is a regisseur. My feeble questions and his epic answers follow the jump.
La Cieca: To begin, the “boxers or briefs” question”—Boston or Stockholm, and why?
David Alden: As seductive as the idea of directing a Verdi opera about Colonial Boston feels (Ulrica the outlawed black fortune-teller, the clash between the effete British ruler Richard, Earl of Warwick and his American subjects, Renato his “Creole” secretary etc.) let’s face it—this American location was chosen almost at random by Verdi to deal with the Italian censor’s banning the depiction of the assasination of a European royal figure. The sound of the musical score is the always the decisive factor in an opera, and Verdi’s score is 100% sparkling European in flavour—the court of Gustavo is a mini-Versailles, elegant and full of sophisticated intrigue—Auber’s Le bal masqué was the previous famous opera on the historical subject of the assassination of Gustavus at Drottningholm and Verdi’s score takes Auber’s French flavour as an inspiration. So Sweden it must be—but our production will not be a historical re-creation of the late eighteenth-century Swedish court. Rather, the cool and repressed Nordic environment (echoes of Bergman and Strindberg) will be evoked.
LC: The Met’s PR materials describe your approach to Ballo as “dreamlike.” Can you expand on that? What about this work (as opposed to, say, Aïda or Trovatore) suggests a dreamlike approach?
DA: I think this is Verdi’s brilliant and despairing existential riff on human existence—his Gustavo is a dreamer and a fantasist—a king who wants to escape his duties, who initiates an affair with the wife of his staunchest defender almost to create his own assassin (Christ and Judas?)—a king who laughingly (how many kinds of laughter there are in this piece, ranging from light to diabolical to desperate) plots his own death step by step. Of course all operas are dreams (the tension and synergy between words, which are rational and precise, and music, which is subjective and mysterious). But Ballo (along with Boccanegra) are the two clearly experimental dream pieces in Verdi’s output.
LC: Your cast for Ballo includes Dmitri Hvorostovsky, who’s well known as a singing actor, and Marcelo Alvarez, who is best known as a “singer”. Is there a different approach in working with artists who have a native flair for acting and those who don’t so much?
DA: I am excited to meet this starry cast—I have never worked with any of them before (actually I worked with Dolora Zajick once decades ago in San Francisco when she was beginning in the Merola program but it was several lifetimes ago). Of course I have seen them all perform countless times around the globe. In rehearsal I try to create an atmosphere of collaboration, discussion and experiment—I am very well-prepared and sure of where I am going (usually) but with such a cast I hope I can throw all my notes away, improvise, and take as much from them as I put in. You would be surprised how often I work with a singer who has a reputation for being stubborn or not an actor and draw them into my world and get something fluid, intense, or unexpected—this I consider my job. These people are thoroughbreds who can function on a very high level! but you have to be at the top of your game and a step or two ahead of them.
LC: A corollary of sorts: when you signed on to this production, Karita Mattila was Amelia; now the role has been passed on to Sondra Radvanovsky. How will this major change of cast affect your approach to the work? Do you think the production will vary from your original conception to fit her personality, or do you expect her to fit into the concept?
DA: Of course Sondra is completely different from Karita and the production will be very different with her as Amelia—we have already adjusted the costume designs for her and I will enter rehearsals open and ready to change everything based on her energy, her voice, her physicality. If Kim Novak had pulled out of Vertigo and, I don’t know… Vivien Leigh had played the part, it would be a very different film.
LC: A general question about the work: to me it feels different in so many ways from what we think of as stereotypically Verdi. Can you comment on what makes Ballo unusual or unique among Verdi’s oeuvre?
DA: This opera is unlike any other Verdi creation—the bizarre combination of serious political material, high Italian melodrama based around the hackneyed stuff of marital infidelity, and an almost operetta-like lightness of being, is experimental and dislocated and sets this apart from his other masterpieces.
Ballo Photo: Brigitte Lacombe/Metropolitan Opera.
Zach Woolfe’s piece on the Aldens.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/arts/music/david-aldens-un-ballo-in-maschera-at-the-met.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&smid=tw-share
Some dolls can fly!
From the Pelly production headed for Barcelona’s Liceu and the San
Francisco Opera
The Met has now posted three video clips of the forthcoming Ballo:
http://www.metoperafamily.org/video/2012-2013/un-ballo-in-maschera
The first seems to show that Kim has been replaced by Hervé Lachaize fron Fantasy Island.
(Alvarez balla!!)
Is that a GIANT glove in the “Eri tu” clip? I am going to love this show.
Maybe it’s the alligator left over from the Salzburg production of “Giulio Cesare.”
Watch out Dancing Danielle, she’s got the high notes, the dancing and she sings both Verdi and Madame Mao.
Hrovo is not sounding good in that clip. Lets hope he is rested and in better voice.
Is it me or does Alvarez not sound very good in that first clip? (I do love his wholehearted embrace of the dance number).
I thought he was marking; or, there is something wrong with the miking.
Was the dress rehearsal of “Ballo” open to the public? Did any of our parterre chère publique attend? Spill.
November 5th was the dress rehearsal that was supposed to be open to those who had tickets but then they decided to close it because of the rehearsal time they lost due to the storm. Those stainless steel desks give me a very uneasy feeling about what the final scene will be like LOL. Certainly not the ballroom from the beautiful production they trashed.
We be Chat tonight Met Ballo yes no?
I hope so.
More details about last night’s Ballo please. Anyone?
Here’s a reasonably detailed review:
http://likelyimpossibilities.blogspot.com/2012/11/david-alden-hosts-ballo-in-maschera-at.html
Thanks so much, Indiana. I gotta ask: What’s with the font on that blog? I could barely make it through the review.
Kashie, I agree with the reviewer’s assessment of the singing and conducting of Ballo.
So far on opera-l, a few reviews of the singing do not agree. They loved the singing.
I do want to see the production in HD if I can get a ticket.
PS the font seemed onto me?
I think I need a new prescription for my glasses. That font looked rather fuzzy to me.
Thanks for the link, Indiana! Kashania, the font is called Sorts Mills Goudy, it comes with Blogger. I think it looks great on my Mac, but someone else did tell me it was hard to read on their Windows computer, so maybe I should consider adjusting it if it’s that much of a bother for many people.
Also I highly recommend y’all go see this Ballo.
I wrote, the font seemed ok to me! But I have a Mac.
I appreciated your detailed review, Zerbinetta. And yes, I have Windows, so that’s the problem.
Thanks for reading! (I’m not tech-savvy enough to have considered that fonts might look different on different operating systems. Will look into it.)
Zerbinetta,
The rarer fonts do not work well on all operating systems. They may look good on your Mac and look like gibberish on a Windows computer. Whereas the more common fonts, such as Arial or Times New Roman, are generally safer bets.
AP review:
“David Alden’s vivid, nightmarish take on Verdi’s ‘Masked Ball’
When the director and his team came out to take their curtain calls, they were greeted with a mixture of bravos and boos, about in equal measure.
There were nothing but cheers, however, for the unusually well-balanced group of singers who filled the five leading roles. For Sondra Radvanovsky in the role of Amelia, the night was a special triumph, her powerful, penetrating voice filling the house with refulgent sound. ”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/review-david-aldens-vivid-nightmarish-take-on-verdis-masked-ball-premieres-at-met-opera/2012/11/09/82d7481e-2a81-11e2-aaa5-ac786110c486_story.html
WQXR blog:
Review: Boos for the Met’s Handsome New Ballo Weren’t
Deserved
http://www.wqxr.org/#!/blogs/operavore/2012/nov/09/review-boos-mets-ballo-werent-deserved/
“Musically, the performance showed how top artists become even better. That wonderful breath control that has allowed Hvorostovsky to take long phrases in a single breath is, more than ever, a vehicle of deepening characterization, his voice having grown beautifully into Verdi repertoire. Alvarez doesn’t vanquish memories of Luciano Pavarotti, who brought a special darkness to Gustavo, but he’s as fine as any Verdi tenor singing today.
As Amelia, Sondra Radvanovsky has less exterior vocal beauty than ever, though the voice can do the work, and the complete package (presence, theatricality) is formidable.”
This review includes the interesting sentence:” In fact, Gustavo is just morally corrupt.”
Don’t know about that. Yes, he tries to “corrupt” the wife of his closest adviser but then thinks better of it and decides to send them both abroad out of temptation’s way.