Bad-boy director Calixto Bieito's production of A Masked Ball at English National Opera is very effective indeed, scandale notwithstanding.

Verdi: A Masked Ball (Un ballo in maschera)

John Daszak (tenor) - Gustavus III
Stephen Gadd (baritone) - Anckarström
Claire Rutter (soprano) - Amelia
Mary Plazas (soprano) - Oscar
Rebecca de Pont Davies (mezzo-soprano) - Madame Arvidson
Graeme Danby (baritone) - Christian
Panajotis Iconomou (bass) - Count Ribbing
Peter Kerr (bass) - Count Horn
Philip Daggett (tenor) - Armfeldt

Chorus and Orchestra of English National Opera
Andrew Litton (conductor)
Calixto Bieito (director)

Tuesday 5 March 2002
Coliseum, London

Calixto Bieito has been creating a stir around Europe lately. The maverick Catalan director ruffled feathers with his Don Giovanni for the English National Opera last year; the production went on to Hannover, where one enraged viewer has threatened court action. But German opera audiences are more accustomed than their British counterparts to sex, violence, and polyester tracksuits on-stage, and by and large the Hannover run has caused less controversy than its London outing. While the German press grumbled that Bieito had missed da Ponte's point or hailed the director's theatrical genius, the British were up in arms about the ENO's insistence, after the Giovanni scandal, on pressing ahead with its season of the same director's A Masked Ball. Rumors got out, from its previous airings in Barcelona and Copenhagen, of toilets, male rape, nudity and blow jobs; at least one cast member pulled out.

So it was surprising, when the curtain lifted on this production in London, to find that there had been no real reason to fuss. Bieito's Masked Ball is everything that his Don Giovanni wasn't: musical, coherent, well-structured and strong. True, some of Bieito's images are coarse, and there's a touch of obscenity, but nothing worse than you'd see on the stage of most regional German opera houses these days.

In fact Bieito's strongest ally in this production, despite his rumored antipathy to the on-stage events, is conductor Andrew Litton. One of the chief problems with the ENO/Bieito Don Giovanni was the lackluster conducting of Joseph Svensen; it's amazing how much more difficult it is to believe in what's happening on stage if the music isn't convincingly performed. Litton, by contrast, knows exactly what he's doing and why, and the results are riveting from start to finish. It's not just the fine Italianate sense of phrasing or his ability to draw a startlingly broad range of colors from the orchestra; what's most exciting about Litton's conducting is how savagely modern he makes the piece sound. The bleak loneliness, the violence, biting satire and horrible grief that Litton draws from Verdi's dark score are far more shocking, ultimately, than any of Bieito's gags. But it's together that the two men succeed: with Litton communicating the emotional truth of the piece, Bieito's production gains immensely in power — and this time, Bieito works with rather than against the composer, giving his characters the time and space to sing, allowing the music to bloom.

Like any tale of politics, love and betrayal, A Masked Ball is readily transplantable. Bieito has chosen post-Franco Spain, a volatile time of shifting allegiances and lurking menace, and the update works well. The male chorus of the first scene is seated on a row of toilets as the curtain rises, trousers around their knees, reading newspapers; apparently this is more about clandestine plotting than answering the call of nature, as the men later pass a hand-gun wrapped in plastic amongst themselves, and hide it in a cistern.

Alfons Flores' set design is simple yet clever. The toilets disappear into the flies to reveal a tiered horseshoe of parliamentary seats; these rise to mid-air for the fortune-telling scene (here played in a brothel), illuminated underneath for various shifts in atmosphere. When the seats are lifted away, the steel wire wall behind them suggests a deserted stadium, a perfect translation of Verdi's execution field. Clockwork Orange-style, Bieito sets a brutal male rape and garroting against the yearning Act Three prelude. The corpse remains on-stage throughout the following scene, until Ribbing and Horn's thuggish friends drag it off for a little fun of their own. Anckarström meets the conspirators in his own chrome-and-steel bathroom, brutalizing Amelia with calculated cruelty. Oscar, here a smart female executive, is also subjected to the casual violence of the men, her cheery invitation to the ball tinged with hysteria.

There's even room for a few allusions to Gustavus III's homosexual proclivities, historically true but hard to explain in the context of his self-destructive love for Amelia. Yet somehow Bieito pulls it off. Here, his theatrical craftsmanship is unimpeachable, his ability to create and build tension unerring. There are flaws which reveal him as a newcomer to opera — his habit of letting the chorus dance in time to the music, in parodied exaggeration of the rhythms; his tendency to keep things a little too busy, as though afraid the audience will otherwise get bored. Some of the trousers-dropping and appendage-sucking could be cut without lessening the impact of his staging. But these are minor quibbles.

Just as Litton's musicality helps us believe what we see, so the excellent cast strengthens Bieito's cause. John Daszak makes a gripping Gustavus III, oozing stage presence. His voice sits best in the lower register and sounds strained at the top, but so completely does he become his complex, tormented character that the few vocally awkward moments are soon forgotten. Claire Rutter's intensity as Amelia is gut-wrenching, and Mary Plazas makes a fascinating Oscar. Stephen Gadd, filling in for the ailing David Kempster on 5 March, was so comfortable in the role of Anckarström that it was hard to believe he had not been involved in the production from the start. Rebecca de Pont Davies is formidable as Madame Arvidson, and all of the lesser roles are competently filled.

It's interesting to realize that Bieito's A Masked Ball is actually an older production than his Don Giovanni; seen from this perspective, the Mozart looks like a pale and unsuccessful copy of the Verdi, a second novel that fails to live up to the promise of the first. Perhaps Bieito is a one-show wonder; time will tell. But there seems enough in this Masked Ball to give reason to hope that Bieito still has a great deal to offer the operatic stage.

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• Controversial Production of A Masked Ball is Hurting English National Opera at the Box Office [expired]
  The Independent [London] - 8 March 2002
• Critics Pan Controversial Verdi Opera With Faint Damnation [expired]
  Associated Press - 22 February 2002

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