[Met Performance] CID:136240



Un Ballo in Maschera
Metropolitan Opera House, Fri, December 17, 1943

Debut : Dorothy Singer, Shirley Weaver, Robert Armstrong, Aubrey Hitchins, Sidney Stambaugh




Un Ballo in Maschera (30)
Giuseppe Verdi | Antonio Somma
Amelia
Zinka Milanov

Riccardo
Jan Peerce

Renato
Leonard Warren

Ulrica
Kerstin Thorborg

Oscar
Frances Greer

Samuel
Norman Cordon

Tom
Nicola Moscona

Silvano
John Baker

Judge
John Dudley

Servant
Lodovico Oliviero

Dance
Julia Barashkova

Dance
Dorothy Singer [Debut]

Dance
Mary Smith

Dance
Shirley Weaver [Debut]

Dance
Robert Armstrong [Debut]

Dance
Aubrey Hitchins [Debut]

Dance
Sidney Stambaugh [Debut]

Dance
Allan Wayne


Conductor
Bruno Walter


Director
Herbert Graf

Set Designer
Mstislav Dobujinsky

Costume Designer
Ladislas Czettel

Choreographer
Laurent Novikoff





Un Ballo in Maschera received seven performances this season.

Review 1:

Review of Oscar Thompson in the Sun

"Masked Ball" Is Revived

Bruno Walter Conducts Verdi Opera at Metropolitan - Cast Presents Changes

Thanks to Bruno Walter, the Metropolitan revival of "Un Ballo in Maschera" last night was better in its entirety than it was in its parts. Here again was conductor opera. The playing of the orchestral score was of a superior order. But beyond that the spirit of the musical leadership was caught and communicated by the singers, though the cast was not similarly superior.

Verdi's eighty-four year old work was last heard at the Metropolitan on February 29, 1942. Only some of the lesser parts were in the same keeping then. Jussi Bjoerling having gone back to Sweden, Giovanni Martinelli was the 1942 Riccardo; Richard Bonelli was the Renato, Stella Roman the Amelia; Bruna Castagna cared for Ulrica and Josephine Antoine appeared as Oscar.

The principals assigned to same roles last night were Jan Peerce, Leonard Warren, Zinka Milanov, Kerstin Thorborg and Frances Greer. Of these only Mmes. Milanov and Thorborg had been heard in performances of "Un Ballo in Maschera" in the several years it held the boards at the time of the last revival.

Jan Peerce Sings Riccardo

Riccardo is rather a heavy role for Mr. Peerce. He met its exactions unflinchingly and sang his airs and duets lyrically, if with limited climactic power. Perhaps the most satisfactory of the lot was "Me se m'e forza" in the last act.

Mr. Warren's Renato was wooden in action and at times burly in song. He essayed the "dolcesa perduto" melody of the "Eri tu" in the half-voice - a commendable idea. But his half-voice was breathy and unsteady. He had a prodigious crescendo, however for the final "d'amore," and the applause was something to listen to, wobble or no wobble. Mr. Warren's is a big voice and his high tones can be depended on to cause a commotion.

Mme. Milanov was in particularly good voice. Moreover, she had her tones more consistently under control than was true at various past appearances. Her production was more nearly what the voice - one of the most opulent in opera today - deserves. Though her singing was by no means flawless, it was often beautiful and sometimes genuinely stirring. She did better with "Morro, ma prima in grazia" than "Ma dale arido stelo divulsa," which was marred by a lachrymose ending that merely broke the vocal line.

The Ulrica of Kerstin Thorborg has never been more convincingly sung. Of course, she was a Swedish voodoo woman, not a Negress - the Metropolitan continuing the opera as an affair of the Sweden of Gustave III instead of Colonial Boston - and the gathering in her den - a very spacious den - was quite a soiree. The quintet in which Ulrica joins - "Ed scherzo ed e follila" -- was one of the examples of an ensemble superior to its separate parts.

Frances Greer as the Page

Some celebrated artists have sung the page Oscar. In Caruso's time as Riccardo we had Frieda Hempel. But the last revival taught us not to expect too much. Last night it was Frances Greer, an erstwhile Musetta, who wore the pants and pitted her light voice and still lighter coloratura against the notes of "Volta la terra" and "Saper vorest." She was pretty and so were many of her phrases. But the coloratura was neither brilliant nor pearly in effect.

Norman Cordon, Nicola Moscona, John Baker, John Dudley and Lodovico Oliviero dealt competently with Samuel, Tom, Silvano, and A judge, and Amelia's servant. Samuel and Tom were toplofty in their capacity of court conspiritors instead of the Negroes they have often purported to be in their usual Back Bay environs. They laughed heartily and in strict time in what is perhaps the silliest of all Verdi finales - the one that closes the curtains on "an abandoned heath"; in this case a snowy waste that made one wonder what Riccardo and Renato were doing without hats and why they were so indifferent about their cloaks.

Mr. Graf's stage direction made the most of opportunities to be pictorial, though the action of "Un Ballo in Maschera" defies all efforts to make it convincing or even believable. Based on Scribe's play, it leaves to the onlooker to wonder what the play can possibly be like without Verdi's music to hold the ear and now and then to really delight it. "The Masked Ball" is essentially an opera for singers - great ones. Without remarkable voices most of its reason for production vanishes. Mr. Walter's task was to make the orchestra seem more important than it really is and to mold the singers into an ensemble that would be musical in spite of their limitation and shortcomings as individual vocalists. He succeeded. There was some complaint that the orchestra was at times too loud. But since it did the best singing of the evening this reviewer found its occasional over-dominance more welcome than otherwise.



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