San Francisco Opera Opens 102nd Season With UN BALLO IN MASCHERA

San Francisco Opera will open its 102nd season on Friday, September 6 with Giuseppe Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera and Opera Ball, the opening night benefit co-hosted with San Francisco Opera Guild. Caroline H. Hume Music Director Eun Sun Kim leads the Company’s first presentation of Un Ballo in Maschera (The Masked Ball) since 2014 in Italian director Leo Muscato’s staging for the Rome Opera which has never been presented outside of Europe. Opening weekend festivities inaugurating the 2024–25 Season continue 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 with vocal stars of the new season.

Since its premiere in 1859—the peak of Verdi’s prolific “middle period” when he was producing soon-to-be classic operas like Rigoletto, La Traviata and Il Trovatore with astonishing regularity—Un Ballo in Maschera has emerged as one of the composer’s most compelling and tightly constructed stage works. A political drama of hidden agendas, treachery and all-consuming passions, Ballo’s fast-paced story is continuously propelled forward by Verdi’s melodic invention, especially in episodes like the eerie fortune-telling scene, the midnight love duet and Renato’s Act III aria, “Eri tu” (“You were the one”), which is regarded as one of the composer’s greatest baritone arias.

Music Director Eun Sun Kim, noted for bringing “tonal muscle and stylistic variety” (San Francisco Chronicle) to her performances of Verdi, leads Un Ballo in Maschera as part of her initiative to conduct major works by Verdi and Richard Wagner every season. This season she takes on Verdi’s Ballo (September 6–27) and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde (October 19–November 5), each for the first time. Her 2024–25 Season also includes a sold-out performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on October 26, honoring the work’s 200th anniversary, and 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, received praise at its 2016 performances in Rome for playing “skillfully with the dramatic elements in the story” (Opera). Muscato’s creative team collaborators, each making their Company debut, are 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 headed by a nucleus of leading operatic stage artists. Michael Fabiano portrays Gustavus III, the Swedish king whose 1792 assassination at a masked ball in Stockholm’s opera house was the spark that fired Verdi’s imagination to create the opera. Fabiano made his San Francisco Opera debut in 2011 and has returned on many occasions as some of opera’s foremost heroes, including the title role of Verdi’s Don Carlo and in Puccini’s La Bohème, Tosca and Madame Butterfly. Of the latter, the San Francisco Chronicle said, “American tenor Michael Fabiano, always a welcome presence in the War Memorial, brought his blazing tone and easy fluency to the role of Pinkerton.”

The role of Amelia is performed by Armenian soprano Lianna Haroutounian. Since her 2014 Company debut as Tosca, 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 glistening, glorious star turns” (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, appearing with San Francisco Opera for the first time, has garnered praise worldwide in Verdi’s baritone roles, including for his 2023 Metropolitan Opera debut as Germont in La Traviata: “… his burnished-mahogany ‘Di Provenza il mar’ proving the most deeply satisfying singing of anyone onstage” (New York Times).

Last seen on the War Memorial Opera House stage in 2022 as “a touchingly expressive, plush-voiced Eurydice” (Opera News) in Gluck’s opera, Mei Gui Zhang returns as Oscar, the king’s page. The Chinese soprano was recently featured in the Company’s award-winning In Song video portrait series. 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 provided one of the most thrilling recent discoveries for critics and audiences alike. Of Kutasi’s Ortrud in Lohengrin, San Francisco Classical Voice said, “She brought a huge, beautifully controlled, vividly colorful voice and first-class acting to the role,” and Parterre proclaimed her debut “quite possible one of the most noteworthy US debuts in the recent years!” The Romanian mezzo-soprano returns this season as the mysterious fortune teller, Ulrica.

Portraying the co-conspirators who plot to assassinate the king are bass Adam Lau as Samuel and current San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow bass-baritoneJongwon Han 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 servant, respectively.

San Francisco Opera first presented Un Ballo in Maschera in 1931 and returned to it in 1937 and 1940, a period when Verdi’s opera was rarely heard on any other American opera stage. The Company has presented the opera in 18 previous seasons, typically with casts featuring the art form’s luminaries. Two artists who are closely associated with Un Ballo in Maschera, both on stage and recordings, made their role debuts in the opera with San Francisco Opera: soprano Leontyne Price sang her first Amelia here in 1965 and tenor Luciano Pavarotti portrayed King Gustavus for the first time in 1971.

Sung in Italian with English supertitles, the seven performances of Un Ballo in Maschera are scheduled for September 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.), 27 (7:30 p.m.), 2024.

To post a comment, you must register and login.