Last week, I wrote about certain aspects of Verdi’s Un Ballo in maschera—its close-to-the-unities compactness and the northerliness of its tinta as distinct from that of other proximate Verdi operas. And I discussed a Berlin radio performance of 1938 starring the Danish tenor Helge Roswaenge, along with some of the other singers and conductors who might have given us performances of the work bringing that aspect of its aesthetic to the fore. These thoughts were occasioned by Ballo’s return to the repertory of the Metropolitan Opera, but time ran out before I could address that event. My assessment herewith.

The Met’s production is a revival. As my regular readers know, I try to give revivals good attention, since—for all our interest in new operas and new productions—it is upon them that the survival of a repertory company ultimately depends. This one was one introduced eleven years ago, conducted then by Fabio Luisi and directed by David Alden with a design team of Paul Steinberg (set), Brigitte Reiffenstuel (costumes), Adam Silverman (lights), and Maxine Braham (choreography). Since no Assistant Director is credited with the re-staging, I assume that D. Alden was present this year to guide the re-installment of his interpretation. His brother Christopher was more prominent than David on the New York scene some years back (early on, there was also fraternal co-direction), so D. Alden’s work was not familiar to me when this production was new except secondhand, via European-based commentary. That commentary, though, had led me to watch the video of his Munich Festival production of Tannhäuser, and then to give that more-than-cursory attention in Opera as Opera. ^(I) There, in a chapter on revisionist Regietheater as of the time of writing, I gave Alden credit for a more complex and courageous approach to Wagner than Robert Wilson’s with Lohengrin. “He faces the work,” I acknowledged, “and from a certain P.O.V., digs into it.” I also quoted bits of his philosophy of production, which he describes as emanating from his own inner emotional life. “I can’t really direct something until I feel that what I have to say personally I can say through this piece.” I coined a term, “auteurial subjectivity,” to describe this sort of thinking about theatrical direction, and asked, as I have many times before and since, “. . . why is it we are supposed to accept the director’s inner emotional life in place of the field defined by the work’s creator(s), not to mention the huge philosophical assumption  . . . that the world itself is but a projection of that life . . . ?”

Much as I disagreed with Alden’s Fichtean notion of his role as director (and much as I was pleased to learn that Christian Thielemann had refused to conduct a revival of this Tannhäuser, an almost unique stand on artistic principle by a contemporary conductor), I did not dismiss him out of hand. The confession of inner emotional life on display in Tannhäuser was misplaced and often off-putting, but it was not that of an immature fanboy—a fanboy not of opera, at that, but of the silly side of the Hollywood of the 1930s and ’40s. That’s what this Ballo is. I had seen it in its first season, and while my memory is often all too sharp at retaining an unwelcome production’s look and vibe, a long-dormant forgetfulness faculty had mercifully snapped to and expunged it utterly, save for the pretty image of Icarus’ flight on the forecurtain. I recalled fragments of the individual performances, but nothing of the staging. I had taken notes, though, and while in what follows I will add a few observations from the event of 10/24/23 [in the brackets], the freshest overall response will come from those of 11/27/12. They don’t make elegant writing, but they do convey the unvarnished reaction. Lightly edited for clarity of syntax and punctuation: