Layers Of Subversion Create A Sumptuous Dramatic Feast

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday February 22, 2008

Peter McCallum

? OPERA

A MASKED BALL

Opera Australia, Opera House. February 20. Until March 29.

Reviewed by Peter McCallum

THIS production by John Cox, first staged in 1985, combines an 18th-century enlightenment look, exemplified by references in John Gunter's and Michael Stennett's design to the courtly baroque operatic productions of Sweden's Drotningholm Palace, with more modern theatre-within-a-theatre ideas, wittily derived from Pirandello.

One would think both ideas are a bit dated, and in places they are, yet the overall conception has held its age well, and, thanks to powerful and splendid chorus work and strong instincts from the conductor, Andrea Licata, it provides an excellent vehicle to carry the brilliant dramatic pace set by Verdi and his compliant librettist.

Under Licata, the orchestra gave Verdi's innovative orchestration, particularly his fateful use of the brass, tight dramatic focus. During the overture and again at the end, courtiers light and extinguish the footlights with candles in a pantomime designed to set Verdi's 1859 drama back in the time of its historical story: the assassination of Sweden's Gustav III in 1792. It is like putting an overly fancy frame on a picture of a wigged king, and this stylishly exaggerated manner is carried forward in the gorgeously coloured courtly symmetry of the first scene.

At the same time, we are given behind-the-scenes glimpses which subvert this entirely. Costumes and bits of scenery, apparently from other productions, are moved around (one box is marked Hamlet). It is as though the borders are simultaneously blurred and reinforced: as Jacques Derrida once observed, meaning in artworks is created at the frame.

The most interesting voice is Dennis O'Neill's as Gustav III, the monarch torn between desire and duty, but it is also the most vulnerable and at times fragile: even its flaws are full of character and the overall personification is satisfying.

Nicole Youl's Amelia, is the opposite voice type: everything is beautifully turned and smooth with inscrutable passivity, embodying a heroine whose dramatic function is to become a subjective response to injustice. Michael Lewis's Anckarstroem is implacable and professional both in loyalty and treachery, while Natalie Jones, as Oscar the page, is a delight, soaring above the great choruses of the outer acts with penetrating clarity.

Bernadette Cullen, as Ulrica the blind fortune-teller, is more in O'Neill's mould where the characterisation and intensity draw one in and a terrible beauty is born. Jud Arthur and Richard Alexander sustain the conspiratorial undercurrents in the opening chorus and later, with effective darkness, and Geoffrey Harris personifies the bewilderment of a judicial officer used to seeing due process overruled by a charismatic leader.

© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald

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