Verdi: Un Ballo In Maschera – Placido Domingo

   in Opera Now (Jun, 2017)
Two reissues from London’s Royal Opera House are worth watching. Firstly, Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera from 1975 in an admittedly dingy production by Otto Schenk. There’s Claudio Abbado’s fleet and polished conducting, then Plácido Domingo’s suavely sung and acted Gustavus, and Piero Cappuccilli’s stentorian Anckarström (rivalled in the baritone stakes by Elizabeth Bainbridge’s booming Madame Arvidson!) Perhaps most interesting is Katia Ricciarelli as Amelia, a role a size too big for her, showing offboth her stunningly limpid and velvety soprano and at the same time just how she pushed it to tatters: sadly the better she is the more harm you know it’s doing her.

Richard Bonynge’s conducting of Donizetti’s …