Opera Holland Park’s acclaimed 2019 production of Un ballo in maschera will be streamed via OHP’s YouTube channel and website from 7.30pm on 2 June 2020, to mark what would have been the opening of the 2020 Season and raise a toast to better times and a return to Holland Park.
The production was originally filmed as part of Opera Holland Park’s International Opera Award-winning Inspire project to take opera to the community and bring the community to opera. Designed to reach members of the community who were unable to attend the theatre in person, the film will be shown only once, free of charge, for everyone who is missing the buzz and collective energy of live performance.
After the critical and popular success of their 2018 collaboration on La traviata, director Rodula Gaitanou and conductor Mathew Kofi Waldren reunited to work on another Verdi tragedy, Un ballo in maschera, with City of London Sinfonia in the pit. Designed by takis, with sets and costumes that moved the action from an imagined 18th century to the glamour, tension and shadows of the 1940s, this production was seen by almost 10,000 people, and, in the OHP Young Artists Schools’ Matinee performance, by approximately 1,000 children.
French soprano Anne Sophie Duprels (Amelia), Italian tenor Matteo Lippi
(Gustavo) and British baritone George von Bergen (Anckarström) were joined
in the main cast by rising star and former OHP Young Artist Alison Langer
(Oscar), the distinguished mezzo-soprano Rosalind Plowright OBE (Madame
Arvidson) and baritones Benjamin Bevan (Ribbing), John Savournin (Horn) and
Ross Ramgobin (Cristiano), with the Opera Holland Park Chorus and City of
London Sinfonia. Lighting was by Simon Corder, with choreography by Steve
Elias and fight direction by Bret Yount.
Writing in The Observer, Howard Jacobson recounted his experience
of the opening night of OHP’s 2019 Un ballo in maschera:
“A sweet tenor, an agonised baritone, and two exquisite sopranos navigated Verdi’s passages from lyricism to mockery with great subtlety, sometimes alone, sometimes in twos, sometimes all at once. No one beats Verdi at rendering the gorgeous cacophony of desire and rage. The night quivered. The orchestra thrilled. The wind blew through the grand marquee, and I became a devotee.”
Programme notes and a synopsis will be made available on the OHP website.