Starting on the 9th, the Liceu puts on stage a production of Un ballo in maschera, whose genesis is marked by tragedy. The British stage director Graham Vick, known for his half-classical, half-modern productions that are so popular in theaters in Italy, died at the age of 67 due to covid, leaving the profession devastated. Especially to those at the Parma theater who were hoping to work with him in this Verdi the following month. Vick left the scenery and costumes ready, so that, in the midst of mourning, his great friend and collaborator Jacopo Spirei took over the role in his place, an experience that the Italian director remembers "as the most painful of my life." "It was like putting on your father's suit that just died," he explains.
This production now arrives at the Liceu with Riccardo Frizza as musical director plus a cast of bells, as there will be the opportunity to see the young tenor Freddie De Tommaso make his debut in an opera staged at the Gran Teatre - although he already gave a performance of Carmen last month - assuming the role of Riccardo, that is, King Gustav III of Sweden, who was murdered in 1792, in the middle of a costume party, and whom censorship forced Verdi to rename and relocate to the lands far from Boston.
Along with him, the soprano Anna Pirozzi will be the one who defends the role of Amelia -Saioa Hernández in the alternative cast-, while Artur Ruciński will be Renato (the third of the political-love triangle) and the Catalan Sara Blanch will assume the role of Oscar, the king's confidant who here clearly exhibits his "fluid gender." "I have few opportunities to play a male character and I thought it would be more so, so I was surprised at the costume fittings, because they put me in a top and a skirt. But Jacopo explained to me how intimate Oscar's relationship was with the king. , who was his confidant..."
Spirei assures that in this masterpiece by Verdi, which touches on universal themes - life, death, politics - the composer describes a leader who has no limits and seeks them. The king himself, who assumed the throne at 18 and was known for his bisexuality and progressivism in a tolerant court, wonders how far he can go, what are his limits, those unbreakable barriers: is it power? Is it making justice your own for an ideal of truth? Is it seducing your best friend? Or is it seducing your best friend's wife?
"In this Ballo we have tried to highlight the fluidity of the piece, and Oscar is the paradigm of that fluidity," says the stage director. "Because the play went through many censorships while being written, and it is deliberate that Oscar appears as that man who dresses as a woman and who is a confidant of the king, she has a very close relationship... We usually consider Verdi conservative, but he not only lived in the small place of Parma but also spent a lot of time in Paris, where there was a lot, let's say, sex, drugs and rock
Before opting for this production in which Vick raises questions that are relevant today, the Liceu considered the idea of reviving the famous Ballo by Calixto Bieito that exacerbated the most conservative audience at the Gran Teatre at its premiere in 2000. It was the season after that of the reopening after the fire, and the realistic bet of the Burgos/Catalan director caused an unprecedented scandal: the corrupt politicians sitting on the toilet bowl, Amelia being severely beaten by her husband when he found out about her affair with the king...
"It could have been a very appropriate exercise to see how that same object that was so disturbing and controversial would not cause any adverse reaction today, since it precisely prefigured what would happen later with the staging," says Víctor García de Gomar, artistic director of the Liceu. It was about showing that it is society that has changed. But talking with Calixto it was clear that he did not feel like this anthropological exercise. Furthermore, it is not that he sees it as an anachronism but that production does not exist, it would have to be built again with the costs that would entail, it is not the Carmen of which there are seven sets touring the world".
The unexpected response that that premiere generated at the turn of the century is the biggest scar that Calixto Bieito's career has generated. As De Gomar remembers, he lasted over time, to the point that eating in a restaurant with his wife and his son, the waiter recognized him: Are you the one from Ballo? Get up and leave, he told him. "This experiment could have now had something of an exorcism, but he was not interested, Calixto is a creator of the present," adds the person in charge of the artistic direction of the Barcelona lyrical coliseum.
On the other hand, Riccardo Frizza confirms that he is not on the list of names that the theater and its orchestra are considering to replace maestro Josep Pons as musical director from 2026, after he has already announced that he will direct the Radio Philharmonic German starting next year. The director from Brescia is a regular at the Rambla theater - this will be his third Verdi -, where he offers the most appropriate interpretations of the Italian repertoire.
Without going any further, Frizza points out that Ballo - which premiered in Rome in 1859 (and two years later in Barcelona) - is an opera that presents an incredible balance between the tragic and the comic. "On an interpretive level this is the greatest challenge that the director has: calculating the transitions in a coherent way, because he goes from a scene with a gloomy-dramatic color to another that is lighter and more festive. And sometimes the silences between those parts are determinants for the change of situation", points out the teacher. Frizza wanted to highlight dramaturgical details and has worked with the singers not only from a musical point of view.
For example, as Sara Blanch indicates, his role as Oscar has to feel guilty at the end, for showing the assassins the king's clothing at the masked ball. "In many recordings we see that there are questions that Oscar formulates that have only been treated from a musical point of view. Phrases that are left there and that have historically been proposed incorrectly. For me Oscar is the key character. A movement, a look, in a silence, and it changes the opera completely. It is not a Trovatore that you can treat from a musical point of view", concludes the musical director.
