Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

A masked Verdi

by
June 2013, no. 352

A masked Verdi

by
June 2013, no. 352

Opera Australia’s spring season in Melbourne opened with two masterpieces by Verdi in his bicentennial year. It was a decidedly rocky pairing.

La Fura dels Baus’s production of Un Ballo in Maschera was first seen in Sydney in January. La Fura is open about its intentions. Assistant director Valentina Carrasco told Time Out Melbourne that ‘it’s not a love story and we want to show that’. (Admirers of the great love duet in Act Two may find this surprising.) Politics are everywhere, and so are the masks. Director Àlex Ollé, writing in the program, refers to recent protest movements like the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, and says that ‘the protester’s aim is to unmask the face of power’. Thus the usually benign and jovial Gustav III of Sweden becomes a boorish, neurotic despot.

From the New Issue

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.