A Masked Ball by Verdi, Thu 18 Jul 2019, From (2018/2019), Directed by Andrejs Žagars, Conductor Yulia Prokhorova, Arvo Volmer, Mikhailovsky Theater, Saint Petersburg, Russia

Un ballo in maschera is one of Giuseppe Verdi’s crowning achievements. The opera is distinguished by the beauty of its vocal parts, the expressiveness of its ensemble singing, the brilliance of the orchestration, and by what Russian theatre historians often call ’Shakespearian might’. Verdi has constructed a musical drama around a series of contrasting moods, leavened the mysterious and gloomy scenes with a light lyricism, and framed the tragic denouement in the energetic gaiety of a costumed ball. At the heart of the fable is a story of political conspiracy which gets mixed up with personal revenge. Since the opera’s libretto had to undergo a series of rewritings due to censorship, today’s producers are at liberty to choose the time and place in which the opera takes place, in keeping with their own artistic concept. In the Mikhailovsky Theatre production, we see a story of the turn of the century: at the start of the 20th century, empires crumbled, and a familiar way of life disappeared together with them.