FROM AROUND THE WORLD: ATLANTA.(Review)

Atlanta Opera continued its current all-Verdi season with a handsome but frustratingly uneven new production of Un Ballo in Maschera (seen June 10). Stage director Ken Cazan's absolutely shattering 1992 Carmen remains the artistic high-water mark for this company, yet somehow the operas of Verdi don't seem to spark his imagination. This Ballo, which follows a torpid 1996 Trovatore and an interesting but gimmicky 1997 Nabucco, didn't really catch fire until midway through the gallows scene (Act II in this production). Small-craft warnings for what was to follow emerged as early as the overture, when Cazan opened this production with that last resort of the desperate director: a plot-in-a-nutshell pantomime, during which the frozen-in-place conspirators menaced Riccardo with knives whenever their sinister theme sounded in the orchestra. It wasn't pretty. Once the action of the opera started, there was much aimless to-ing and fro-ing by chorus members, to no good purpose other than to shift the stage picture -- hardly a scandalous notion but, given the remarkably responsive Atlanta Opera chorus, a wasted resource at best.

Within this context, tenor Bonaventura Bottone managed a world-class Riccardo, his manner warm yet authoritative, his singing beautiful, tasteful and lyrical throughout, even when he was being upstaged by Oscar's busy-ness in Act I. It's no coincidence that the opera really ignited only when it finally united this Riccardo with Amelia and Renato in Act II. In ...