The San Francisco Opera opens its 102nd season on Friday, September 6, with Giuseppe Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera and Opera Ball, the opening night benefit co-presented with the San Francisco Opera Guild. Caroline H. Hume Music Director Eun Sun Kim leads the company's first performance of Un Ballo in Maschera (The Masked Ball) since 2014 in Italian director Leo Muscato's production for the Rome Opera, which has never been performed outside of Europe. Opening weekend festivities to inaugurate the 2024–25 season continue on Sunday, September 8, with San Francisco Chronicle Presents Opera in the Park, the annual free concert in Golden Gate Park featuring Maestro Kim and the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, as well as the new season's singing stars.
Since its premiere in 1859—the high point of Verdi's prolific “middle period,” when he staged with astonishing regularity operas that would soon become classics, such as Rigoletto, La Traviata, and Il Trovatore—Un Ballo in Maschera has become one of the composer's most gripping and dense stage works. Ballo's fast-paced story, a political drama full of ulterior motives, betrayal, and all-consuming passions, is continually driven forward by Verdi's melodic inventiveness, particularly in episodes such as the eerie fortune-telling scene, the midnight love duet, and Renato's third-act aria, “Eri tu” (“You were the one”), considered one of the composer's greatest baritone arias.
Music Director Eun Sun Kim, known for bringing “sonic power and stylistic variety” (San Francisco Chronicle) to her Verdi performances, conducts Un Ballo in Maschera as part of her initiative to conduct major works by Verdi and Richard Wagner each season. This season, she will conduct Verdi's Ballo (September 6-27) and Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (October 19-November 5), both for the first time. Her 2024-25 season also includes a sold-out performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on October 26 in honor of the work's 200th anniversary, as well as Mozart's early masterpiece Idomeneo in June 2025.
With productions of La Forza del Destino, Rigoletto, Attila, Ernani, I Masnadieri and I Due Foscari, Leo Muscato has developed a deep affinity for staging Verdi's works. His vision for Un Ballo in Maschera, which retains Verdi's original Swedish setting, was praised for its “deft play with the dramatic elements of the story” at the 2016 performances in Rome (Opera). Muscato's creative team, all making their debut with the company, includes set designer Federica Parolini, costume designer Silvia Aymonino and lighting designer Alessandro Verazzi. San Francisco Opera dance master Colm Seery is the choreographer and chorus director John Keene prepares the artists of the San Francisco Opera Chorus.
The international cast is led by a core of leading opera artists. Michael Fabiano plays Gustav III, the Swedish king whose assassination at a masked ball at the Stockholm Opera in 1792 captured Verdi's imagination and inspired him to create the opera. Fabiano made his San Francisco Opera debut in 2011 and has since appeared on many occasions in roles of some of opera's greatest heroes, including the title role in Verdi's Don Carlo and in Puccini's La Bohème, Tosca and Madame Butterfly. Of the latter, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: “American tenor Michael Fabiano, always a welcome presence at the War Memorial, brought his fiery tone and effortless agility to the role of Pinkerton.”
The role of Amelia is played by Armenian soprano Lianna Haroutounian. Since her debut as Tosca in 2014, Haroutounian has enjoyed several triumphs on the War Memorial Opera House stage, including Cio-Cio-San in Madame Butterfly as “a butterfly for the ages” (Mercury News), Nedda in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci – “another of her brilliant, glorious performances” (San Francisco Chronicle) – and the title role in Puccini's Manon Lescaut.
Completing Ballo's love triangle is Amartuvshin Enkhbat as Renato. The young Mongolian baritone, making his first appearance with the San Francisco Opera, has won praise around the world for Verdi baritone roles, including his 2023 Metropolitan Opera debut as Germont in La Traviata: “… his burnished mahogany 'Di Provenza il mar' proves to be the most deeply satisfying singing of any member of the stage” (New York Times).
Mei Gui Zhang was last seen on the War Memorial Opera House stage in 2022 as a “touchingly expressive, lush-voiced Eurydice” (Opera News) in Gluck's opera, and now returns as Oscar, the king's page. The Chinese soprano was recently featured in the company's award-winning video portrait series In Song. In Song: Meigui Zhang traces her personal and artistic journey from Chengdu to an international opera career.
Judit Kutasi's American debut with San Francisco Opera last season was one of the most exciting discoveries of recent times for critics and audiences alike. Of Kutasi's Ortrud in Lohengrin, San Francisco Classical Voice said, “She brought a powerful, beautifully controlled, vividly colorful voice and first-class acting to the role,” and Parterre called her debut “quite one of the most remarkable U.S. debuts of recent years!” The Romanian mezzo-soprano returns this season as the mysterious fortune teller Ulrica.
The co-conspirators plotting the king's assassination are played by bass Adam Lau as Samuel and bass-baritone Jongwon Han, current Adler Fellow of the San Francisco Opera, as Tom. Tenor Christopher Oglesby is the chief magistrate and current Adler Fellows Samuel Kidd and Thomas Kinch take on the roles of Christiano and Amelia's servants, respectively.
The San Francisco Opera first performed Un Ballo in Maschera in 1931 and returned to perform it in 1937 and 1940, at a time when Verdi's opera was hardly heard on any other American opera stage. The company has performed the opera for the previous 18 seasons, usually with the art form's biggest stars. Two artists closely associated with Un Ballo in Maschera both on stage and in recordings made their operatic role debuts with the San Francisco Opera: soprano Leontyne Price sang her first Amelia here in 1965, and tenor Luciano Pavarotti first portrayed King Gustav in 1971.
The seven performances of Un Ballo in Maschera in Italian with English surtitles are scheduled for 6 (8 p.m.), 11 (7.30 p.m.), 15 (2 p.m.), 18 (7.30 p.m.), 21 (7.30 p.m.), 24 (7.30 p.m.) and 27 (7.30 p.m.) September 2024.
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