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Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 May 2000 Issue No. 482 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 May 2000 Issue No. 482
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Features Heritage Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Anything goes
By David Blake
Un Ballo In Maschera, Verdi; Cairo Opera Orchestra and Chorus, conductor Ivan Filev, chorus master Aldo Magnato, director Gehane Morsi; Cairo Opera House Main Hall, 10 May
The Ballo, as its addicts call it, is like the fountains at the Villa D'Este. In middle Verdi the tunes never stop, they just get better all the time. Ballo is like jewellery in the skies. It cannot really fail, unless orchestra and singers let it down. In this Cairo production, they did not. All the people in the Ballo are genuine characters. It is about a king, Ricardo (tenor), and a beautiful lady of his court, Amelia (soprano). The king is in love -- but with whom, Amelia the lady, or her husband Renato (baritone)? Renato loves liberty, truth and justice, difficult for all three, particularly as he discovers his wife after midnight in a graveyard, alone with his best friend, none other than the king.
Brigands, plotters and the final calamity of the shooting of the king at the Ball Masqué by his best friend. Amelia, in one of the heart-rending finales of Verdi's operas, tells the king it has all been platonic. Renato is forgiven, the king dies and Amelia learns the lesson. Be careful of your man if he is the right one.
The plot sounds awful. Ballo was hounded by the censors. For some peace of mind and the chance of a public performance he moved the entire farrago to Boston, Massachusetts, in the 18th century. He need not have worried. The plot is no more unbelievable than 20th-century Washington under Kennedy. It also reopened the great new London Covent Garden Opera where it became Queen Victoria's favourite Verdi work. It never fails, however weirdly it is presented.
The Cairo Opera show is pure pantomime, but Verdi's music turns it into a triumph. Brave of the opera to mount it in these difficult times, but pleasure for the listeners because for once the opera has given the real, the genuine thing, grand opera with a cast able to manipulate its difficulties. The Cairo Opera Orchestra gave a dignified and sympathetic, even loving account of the music.
photo: Sherif Sonbol
Four consecutive performances required two separate casts. The first had Iman Mustafa as Amelia, a difficult role. Verdi takes her voice up through the roof in the manner he was later to adopt in his Requiem, and demands dramatic tones and huge ensembles. All this Mustafa achieved. She is a self-critical and improving artist. Emil Ivanov of Bulgaria, a noble forceful sound in all registers, displays dramatic sympathy in the character of the wobbly king. Renato (Alfio Grasso), a victim of the king's indecision and of his wife's kindness to strangers, had a fine, full Italianate baritone and, like the other two of the trio, looked handsome. The Sorceress Ulrica (Boica Vassileva of Bulgaria), had a magnificent, penetrating mezzo sound. Tom (Abdel-Wahab El-Sayed) is a bad man, out to get the king. Sam (Ashraf Sweilam), who is at the same game, looked very chic. Both helped the production with their vocal distinction.
The second cast, as a team, felt the business of coping with the immense scale of the work, the Verdian arcs of sound sounded at times very trying. The young Italian soprano, Paola Di Gregorio, has the makings of a good Amelia, but there are three long acts, and Verdi's love of endless high tessitura for the females puts the greatest strain on fully equipped divas, let alone those starting out on the life of that rarest of creatures, the Verdian soprano.
The tenor, Walid Korayem, has a pleasant sound to his voice, but it is a pity the sound as yet does not match the staunchly heroic mould of the man himself. The second Ulrica was Awatef El-Sharkawi, soft-grained but a lovely voice managed through the climaxes with tact and power.
These two casts, under the loving care of Ivan Filev, who really feels for this music, brought Verdi's sounds to the central point of the Ballo, weak humans doing their best to survive through a period of decadence. It is in the music, and the orchestra brought it before us to the stage. Verdi changed opera, pruned away all of its absurdities, and gave instead scores full of technical variety and detail, so complex that we have to go back to the beginning of things and see how Verdi came to compose music equal to the passions of Bach. Ballo is a seething mass of polyphony, one thing sliding into another, duo into trio into quartet, quintet, full chorus and orchestra with none of it repetitive or unnecessary. It is an opera in the dark, all happening at night, a nether world, like being inside a palatial ant hill. It says much for the performance that, as it glided through the long three acts it quite lacked the longeurs that too often mar Ballo In Maschera in performance.
When Mona Rafla, as the page Oscar, bends over the dying king to comfort him, gently patting him on the shoulder, she both sings and acts the pathos and irony of the situation. It has no answer to any of the questions, except perhaps compassion.
As the concentrated forces zoomed into the heights, we were witnesses to the true splendours of grand opera.
There is a tree, the frangipani, which is quite unbeautiful as a tree: rubbery branches, nondescript leaves, no proportions; and then at the right time the little creamy white flowers appear direct from the ugly branches. One frangipani tree can suffuse over a large orchard a perfume so subtle it defies words. An opera such as Ballo is a frangipani tree, and such scent can colour an entire culture.
