UN BALLO IN MASCHERA

"The final scene in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera invites stage directors to dazzle their audiences with a sumptuous masked ball. The public at this new production was duly dazzled, in the best of taste, and not just by the scintillating golds and pinks of the ball gowns. Director Fabio Ceresa gives an interesting slant to the love triangle. Instead of the king’s secretary, Renato is his portrait painter. Gustavo, usually a reckless, joke-loving monarch, is an insomniac plagued by worries, which include his dangerous enemies. Ceresa also plausibly alters the fortune-teller Ulrica’s cure for Amelia’s infatuation with Gustavo. The obscure herb Amelia is supposed to collect at midnight is opium. Renato catches his wife with her lover in a lavish, amber-draped opium den, teeming with addicts and attendants in rippling pastels. What marvellous work!"

Bachtrack.com