Un ballo in maschera, Piacenza, February 2004:  “José Cura is a singer, he knows the singers’ demands and he knows how to follow the singers. The audience can be sure of the high quality of José's performance with the Orchestra Toscanini: he has great natural qualities and a deep knowledge of music.”  Vincenzo La Scola in Liberta, February 2004

Un ballo in maschera, Piacenza, February 2004:  “[Conductor] José Cura used beautifully sweeping gestures that, however, homogenized the orchestral score—in part, perhaps, because of the less-than-ideal acoustic space.  Such a homogeneous sound does not do full justice to a Verdi score rich in precious nuances.  However, the response of the "new" audience, to whom this staging was addressed, proved to be decidedly warm, decreeing a broad success to the initiative.”  Il Giornale della Musica, 21 February 2004

Un ballo in maschera, Piacenza, February 2004:  “The impression remained of a kind of musical comedy with a score by a certain Giuseppe Verdi.  Tenor José Cura abdicated the singing role in favor of the baton.  The difficult questioned followed: is he better as a singer or conductor? That it was being talked about and discussed, a real sign of interest. However, judgment remained partly suspended because of what such an anomalous, unexpected, bizarre environment the Expo entails.  The phonic-acoustic performance was seriously compromised by the immense microphoned space and overhead heating ducts.  Under the circumstances one cannot then demand sound purity.   We resigned ourselves to troublesome scrambling which annoyed the listener and caused a disconnect between the “stage” and the orchestra.  Certainly Cura took care to lovingly indulge the singers with gentle gestures (albeit between sluggishness and ponderous), well aware of the singer’s need, especially when grappling with the treacherous Ballo.”  Liberta, 22 February 2004

Un ballo in maschera, Piacenza, February 2004:  “When José Cura steps up to the podium and puts his baton between his teeth so he can easily arrange the score on the music stand, one cannot help but smile with satisfaction. The Argentine tenor, for the first time on the podium in Italy, chose Giuseppe Verdi's Ballo in Maschera set in a ring surrounded on all four sides by the audience. A total spectacle, requiring the singers to attack even with their backs to the conductor, designed by Pier Luigi Pizzi…   Two tenors triumph: the one in the orchestra and the one on stage. Cura, a perfect conductor, brings the singer's wisdom to the podium, breathes with his performers and, above all, does not push the accelerator of the tempo. Vincenzo La Scola draws a Riccardo who stands out as much for color and phrasing as for interpretive wisdom. Kudos to the entire cast….”   Avvenire, 24 February 2004

Un ballo in maschera, Cologne, May 2008:  “Cura makes the ruler Riccardo a kind of Othello figure who has to deal with the racism of his society,   debatable but essentially justified by the main actor (who is black).  Developing one's own ideas for a staging is not forbidden but one cannot shake off the impression that Cura's ideas are quite arbitrary….[however] José Cura has begun his directing career, even if the birth of a new director did not happen on this night.”  Online Musik Magazin, 7 May 2008

Un ballo in maschera, Cologne, May 2008:  “The illustrious Argentine tenor José Cura, who is trying his hand at an opera production for the first time in Cologne, once again sends Riccardo on a journey through times and spaces. In his capacity as director and stage designer of Un ballo in maschera, he makes him the head of a military dictatorship in the middle of the last century - at least, that's what can be inferred from the style of the fantasy uniforms.   This would not be a problem if it did not contradict Cura's intention, expressed in the run-up to the performance, to formulate a concrete political statement.  This statement is abstruse enough in itself.  Because the main character, Ray M. Wade, is an African-American, the director feels called upon to play the racism card.  Has anyone ever heard or seen anything like it—that a director builds the action around the random skin color of the lead actor? What is Cura actually going to do if Wade ever drops out - rub shoe polish on the replacement?

Racism occurs in only one place in the libretto: The judge calls Ulrica "dall'immondo sangue dei negri" - "from the impure blood of the Negroes." That's not nice, by any means, but that's about it; the motif plays no role in the further course of the plot. The situation is different for Cura: here the governor, deeply offended by this characterization, orders a murder order against the judge according to good old Mafia custom, who is then actually shot and disposed of in the second act at the aforementioned garbage dump.  The intention is clear: Riccardo is already seen and understood from Verdi's late Otello—an opera in which the motif of skin color is of outstanding importance.  But this transference, can only be achieved with extreme violence—that is, not at all. Incidentally, the governor, originally a sensitive melancholic in B-flats who sings “addio” unusually often, has to mutate into a bloodthirsty tyrant in the new reading.  Riccardo may have a few skeletons in his closet, but a turn in the direction of Idi Amin doesn't keep up with the music for a moment.  In this sense, Cura's toying with the possibility that Amelia's hesitant, loving approach to Riccardo is a set-up by her friend Renato and his wife also seems misguided.  Would you like a pinch of Macbeth?  But why then the disastrous scenes of a marriage at the beginning of the third act?  As Verdi composed them, they hang in the air in Cura's approach.

Nor is it to his credit that he does not execute his ideas consistently or in a way that is immediately comprehensible to the audience. Their bizarre eccentricity counteracts the stage action that is almost unsurpassable in its uninspired bravado and conventional boredom. Cura has people standing around and singing on the ramp, unthinkingly setting aside what is not needed at the moment. There is not even the beginning of a scenic resolution and an interaction of the actors that deserves this name. Not only at the masked ball do the characters seem hypnotized, stricken by a kind of rigor mortis.  In any case, as a listener, you can close your eyes for minutes without missing anything.  The last Cologne opera premiere of the season was altogether depressing. A pity….”   Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 18 May 2008

Un ballo in maschera, Cologne, May 2008:  “Cura brought the idea that the action taken is based on racist motivations.  In his view, the fit is twice as good because in the lead role of Riccardo is played by a black Texan.   Cura, who also designed the set, makes everything about political intrigue and nothing about love—but the singing is all about love and rarely anything else since Verdi and librettist had removed all political allusions on instructions of the authorities in Rome and Naples in 1859.  If one did not have the program, it is probable that the racist aspect of Cura’s staging would not have been recognized.”  Aachener Zeitung, 18 May 2008

Un ballo in maschera, Cologne, May 2008:  “While keeping his hand in singing, tenor José Cura has for some years now been branching out—into conducting, composing, photography and a whole lot else.  Cologne’s new Ballo represents his first foray into opera direction.  It is left to the synopsis in the programme, in deliciously idiosyncratic English, to explain Cura’s quirky theory about the piece:  that Amelia has been setting up Riccardo all along, that it was all a cunning plan to put her husband on the throne.  This is a daft interpretation that the libretto cannot, on any logic basis, support, born, no doubt, of the usual desperation to be seen to be giving an old piece a new spin and thus appear innovative.” Opera Now, January/February 2008

Un ballo in maschera, Catania, January 2013 (Conductor):  “On the podium the orchestra had José Cura, a tenor acclaimed throughout the world and a decidedly eclectic artist. Just his sensibilities, his concern for breath and vocal dynamics, meant that the accompaniment of the orchestra and the evolution of the singers combined in perfect harmony, both rhythmically and in the ratio between volumes of sound.”  GB Opera, 1 February 2013  

Un ballo in maschera, Catania, January 2013 (Conductor): “Eight uninterrupted minutes of applause, a standing/real ovation for tenor Marcello Giordani, for soprano Dimitra Theodossiou, for José Cura, the conductor, and for Luca Verdone, the director. A consensus that declared Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘A masked ball,’ which last night opened the 2013 opera season for the Bellini Theater in Catania, a success. The orchestra of the "Bellini", under the energetic and impassioned baton of such a great personality of the operatic stage as José Cura, gave its best.” ANSA, January 2013

Un ballo in maschera, Catania, January 2013 (Conductor):  “José Cura led the orchestra of our theater with decisiveness and steadfast dynamics expertise, managing to dispense with extreme precision and tenacity every little sound and expression variation, never overpowering or overwhelming (perhaps because he is himself an excellent vocalist) the singers’ voices with intrusive or unwanted sounds while never forgetting refinement and discretion.”  BelliniNews, 20 January 2013

Un Ballo in maschera – The Interview

Libertá

Oliviero Marchesi

19 February 2004

Cicci translated and sent the following interview from the paper Libertà (Piacenza), dated 19 Feb 2004.

As conductor, how do you approach a score like that of ‘Un ballo in maschera’?

Let me start by saying that as a conductor, I prefer the symphonic repertoire—Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Dvorak, Respighi—also because I already do a lot of opera as a singer. However, the score of Ballo in maschera, a masterpiece by the mature Verdi, fascinates me because of its perfection. I am enthusiastic about the group of singers who will perform at the PiacenzaExpo: they should be on CD, at LaScala! Being a singer myself, I look to accompany my colleagues with the greatest possible degree of insight and understanding of their needs. I am also enthusiastic about the sensitivity of the Orchestra Toscanini. But it’s a pity that in a place that is as vast and (filled) with microphones, many nuances aren’t going to reach everyone in the audience.

You are very sensitive to the demand, the need for giving new, fresh theatrical vigor and vitality to opera, but in a recent interview you have put (people) on guard against the idea that it is sufficient to be thought of as unconventional in order to win new spectators for the opera. “Charisma attracts an audience”, you said. But the plan calls for this particular ‘Ballo’ to be performed in an exhibition hall, something that obviously has captivated you, which appeals to you.

That’s correct, even if one must be aware of one thing: just as in the theater the experienced audience knows that it cannot expect the perfection of a CD, likewise this opera at the PiacenzaExpo involves margins of risk, of adventure, of imperfections/flaws greater than those of a performance staged in a traditional theater.

And so, why are you doing this here? Why are you performing in this venue?

Because I like the idea of carrying art to places that are not normally reserved, built for it. It is like celebrating Mass in a square rather than in a church. A few of the faithful might feel ill at ease and say, “I cannot manage to pray in a square”, (but) the square comes out enriched, sanctified.

Other singers have tried orchestral conducting, but none with your kind of success. What is the secret to your versatile talent?

If I said that it is God’s special favor, that those are God-given talents, people would say, “Who does he think he is?” Therefore I prefer answering in this way: the secret, the key consists of a lot of hard work and a lot of sacrifices over many years. It’s made up of curiosity, of a passion for art that brought me on stage for the very first time at the age of 12 as an actor, then at 13 as a guitarist and at 15 as a conductor-and has brought me to study many instruments: the violin, the flute and the trombone.

Let’s play a game: try to tell me, percentage-wise, where you come down as singer and as conductor; to what degree you feel like one or the other.

At the expense of upsetting my fans, I’d like to mention that I started to conduct long before I began to sing. It was my teacher Carlos Gantus who advised me to study singing; not in order to embark on a new career but to become a better conductor.

As a tenor, you have reaped world-wide success performing in operas—in Otello, Samson et Dalila, Pagliacci and Turandot—traditionally considered well performed only by ‘dramatic tenors’, a vocal classification whose progressive extinction dyed in the wool lovers of music have been lamenting for a long time now. Do you identify with this label?

If we understand the expression ‘dramatic tenor’ to mean what it did in the 1950s, when it denoted a voice that was constantly above a certain number of decibels, well, then I am not a dramatic tenor. In Otello for example, I’ve tried to look for, to come up with new vocal colors instead of pure power. But if by ‘dramatic tenor’ you mean a singer capable of rendering realistically and credibly the dramatic quality, the drama, of a theatrical performance, well then I’d like to think that I am one.

You look like a man who is used to realizing his own ambitions; have you ever thought about acting? Besides feeling at home on stage, you can also count on a very noteworthy physical presence, on much appreciated good looks.

They have offered that to me many times. They have asked me to perform Tennessee Williams in a theater setting and even to take part in a colossal film about the Roman invasion of Britain. Up to now, I have always said no, because I am convinced that there is a time (and season) for everything. At the moment, I want to concentrate on two or three things that I do well and feel comfortable with, also because I still have many roles to sing. The artistic life of a singer is not without limit as far as time is concerned.

Cura and the Toscanini Foundation bring Verdi to the Fair and Hit the Mark

Avvenire

Pierachille Dolfini

24 February 2004

[Computer-assisted translation / Excerpt]

The Arturo Toscanini Foundation moves melodrama from the stuccos and golds of the Municipal Theater to the exhibition halls of the PiacenzaExpo. And it hits the mark. 

When José Cura steps up to the podium and puts his baton between his teeth so he can easily arrange the score on the music stand, one cannot help but smile with satisfaction. The Argentine tenor, for the first time on the podium in Italy, chose Giuseppe Verdi's Ballo in Maschera set in a ring surrounded on all four sides by the audience. A total spectacle, requiring the singers to attack even with their backs to the conductor, designed by Pier Luigi Pizzi, who shifted the events from late 17th-century America to the 1960s: no sumptuous palaces, but refined interiors littered with leather sofas and lamps; no fields, but metropolitan exteriors with Harley Davidson. In Pizzi's reading, which never overpowers the music, Renato (an excellent Vladimir Stoyanov) is no longer the count's secretary, but a U.S. Army general, and Ulrica (Elisabetta Fiorillo) leaves the guise of the Creole fortune-teller to become a TV magician. Also on stage are cameras that send images of the show back outside the ring.

The two tenors triumph: the one in the orchestra and the one on stage. Cura, a perfect conductor, brings the singer's wisdom to the podium, breathes with his performers and, above all, does not push the accelerator of the tempo. Vincenzo La Scola draws a Riccardo who stands out as much for color and phrasing as for interpretive wisdom. Kudos to the entire cast…

A 1960s “Ball”

Il Giornale della Musica

Alessandro Rigolli

21 February 2004

[Computer-assisted translation / Excerpt]

A new "Ballo," or rather a new idea of Verdi's Ballo in Maschera was staged in Piacenza in the unusual space - unprecedented for opera - of PiacenzaExpo. The director of this new production by the Municipale di Piacenza-Fondazione Toscanini is Pier Luigi Pizzi who, to make the setting of the opera plausible in a non-theatrical space such as a trade fair pavilion, transported the historical context to the 1960s, to a Boston with vague Kennedysque references. [It featured a] Wide, square center stage surrounded by four wings of bleachers for a total scene in which environments were evoked by a few pieces of furniture (armchairs, desks and a television studio-antro of Ulrica for the first act, two pylons for the desolate field of the second, minimalist apartment and, later, a single central couch for the last). Riccardo enters the stage in a blazing red custom-built car, the conspirators—all military, like Renato—join Amelia and her husband on vintage motorcycles, in colorful costumes inspired by the elegance of those years. Singers and chorus were forced to act without being able to address a "fourth wall" that no longer exists—or perhaps surrounded.  Overall—accepting to play along with a reinterpretation that smells like a musical—the set-up works, with a few marked traits found in the second act pantomime between drug dealer and boy who "gets in the mood" in front of a somewhat bewildered Amelia, and a few too many American flags.

[Conductor] José Cura used beautifully sweeping gestures that, however, homogenized the orchestral score—in part, perhaps, because of the less-than-ideal acoustic space.  Such a homogeneous sound does not do full justice to a Verdi score rich in precious nuances.  However, the response of the "new" audience, to whom this staging was addressed, proved to be decidedly warm, decreeing a broad success to the initiative.

At the Grand Ball of the Sixties

Liberta

Francesco Bussi

22 February 2004

[Computer-Assisted Translation / Excerpt]

[…] The impression remained of a kind of musical comedy with a score by a certain Giuseppe Verdi.  Tenor José Cura abdicated the singing role in favor of the baton.  The difficult questioned followed: is he better as a singer or conductor? That it was being talked about and discussed, a real sign of interest. However, judgment remained partly suspended because of what such an anomalous, unexpected, bizarre environment the Expo entails.  The phonic-acoustic performance was seriously compromised by the immense microphoned space and overhead heating ducts.  Under the circumstances one cannot then demand sound purity.   We resigned ourselves to troublesome scrambling which annoyed the listener and caused a disconnect between the “stage” and the orchestra.

Certainly Cura took care to indulge the singers to lovingly indulge the singers with gentle gestures (albeit between sluggishness and ponderous), well aware of the singer’s need, especially when grappling with the treacherous Ballo.

Debut of José Cura as Stage Director

EFE
El Universal
Berlin
Thursday December 27, 2007

[Computer-Assisted Translation]

The Argentine tenor will direct Verdi’s Masked Ball next 17 May in the German city of Cologne   

 

Argentine tenor and conductor José Cura has decided to explore new artistic horizons and will try his luck as a stage director—but without abandoning singing for the simple reason that “singing pays my bills.”

 
"As a director I am a novice and therefore not paid well. In fact, my actual pay as director for the entire production is more or less what I earn as a tenor in a single evening," revealed Cura in an interview with the magazine Opernglas.

Cura, living for years in Spain, makes his debut as director on 17 May in Cologne (western German), and the production chosen for this initial effort is the opera Un ballo in maschera (A masked ball) by Giuseppe Verdi.

“Germany is an ideal place for any producer, because the public here is more open-minded than almost anywhere else,” maintains Cura, who nevertheless feels comforted that “my big challenge as director is to achieve a balance between modernity and tradition.”

The musician considers this experience as “one more step in my career, just as many actors, after years of experience, decide they want to be on the other side of the camera,” but he insists that not only will he not abandon his role of singer but he will also expand his repertoire.

Among Cura’s future plans is Parsifal by Richard Wagner, an opera he will sing in concert version in 2010 at the Deutsche Oper Berlin that offers a major new challenge for the tenor--and not just because, in this case, he must sing in German.

Stage direction of Un ballo in maschera, a new challenge for José Cura

EFE

Joaquín Rábago

24 April 2007

[Computer-Assisted Translation // Excerpt]

London, Apr 24 (EFE) - The stage direction of the opera of Giuseppe Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera  is the new challenge that the Argentine tenor José Cura, who now lives in Spain, has set himself.

"I'll do it next year at the invitation of the opera of the German city of Cologne," he told EFE in his dressing room at the Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden, where he is currently performing Stiffelio, also by Verdi.

Cura confesses that he’s not worried that some think that by taking on stage direction duties he is shunning his status as a tenor and explains that he is simply interested in expanding his range of activities.

"Un ballo in maschera is an opera that I know well because I have sung it and I have also performed it in front of the orchestra. It is a very interesting work to experiment with," the musician points out.

"The fact that the tenor (in the Cologne opera) is of color allows me to adapt the entire dramaturgy," he adds, referring to the American singer Ray M. Wade Jr.

This same year, Cura will also direct a show entitled La Commedia è finita in Rijeka (Croatia), based, as he explains, on the Leoncavallo opera Pagliacci.

Regarding Stiffelio, the opera he has come to [Covent Garden] to sing, Cura has been compelled to respond to criticisms that have been published about the production, the same one with which he made his debut in London in 1995.

The criticisms have to do with the extraordinary vocal power of the main performers, Cura himself (the Protestant pastor Stiffelio), the American soprano Sondra Radvanovsky (Lina, his adulterous wife) and the Italian baritone Robert Frontali (her father).  The vocal power is such that it often drowns out the Royal Opera orchestra, conducted on this occasion by Mark Elder, and results a less nuanced interpretation.

What happens, Cura explains, is that in the first act, which takes place inside the house where the priest's family lives, the stage acts as a huge sounding board, amplifying the voices.

"We're completely aware of it. It's like singing in the shower at home. Sometimes we even lack the reference of the orchestra.  We can't hear it properly." Cura added that, on the other hand, it is also why the singers sometimes seem to go their own way.

"In Vienna, where we have also done it because it is a co-production, the fact that the orchestra pit was higher helped the overall balance," explains the tenor.

In the second act, which takes place in the cemetery next to the church, and they are no longer inside the "closed box" of the first, the orchestral and vocal sound seem to find a better balance in London, the phrasing becomes clearer and it becomes easier to understand the original Italian.

Cura, who made his debut at Covent Garden in this role in 1995, says that from a vocal point of view, he sang "with much greater unconsciousness" while today he does it with "greater prudence".

With the experience of years (he is now forty-five), Cura says he better understands Stiffelio, whom he describes as a "tremendous character."

The opera is about a Protestant pastor who returns home to find that his wife has been unfaithful with another man: Raffaele di Leuthold (played by Cuban Reinaldo Macias).

For Cura, despite the fact that the opera hints at the forgiveness of the cheated husband after the death of the seducer at the hands of the wife's father, the pastor has lost faith and never really forgives the adulteress, as the parishioners (the chorus) do.

"I think the relationship between Stiffelio and Lina is irretrievably broken," clarifies the tenor, for whom the protagonist is "a tortured character, very black," and "for that reason,” he adds, “I have darkened my voice, to make the character more sullen."

If a Singer Switches Sides

By Olaf Weiden

8 May 2008

Kölnische Rundschau

[Computer-Assisted Translation]

Somehow, it is like a very beautiful blonde woman:  few expect further talents from them.  Now comes to work in Cologne at the Opera a man whom the magazines of the 90s proclaimed the ‘ideal man for public eroticism’ because the hot-blooded Argentinean posses black curls, a triumphant look, and a well trained body which he earned himself once as a rugby play and fitness trainer.

The man who has become the ‘tenor of the 21^st Century’ as a member of the first team of opera stars also appears a conductor, has studied composition, and is a notable photographer.  This essence of pure masculinity, named José Cura, is now being presented to the audience of the Cologne Opera by its outgoing director, Christoph Dammann, as a director. 

José Cura has not yet been a director but after the Cologne “Masked Ball” by Verdi he can add this professional title to his job list. … And so it was important to be allowed to experience José Cura in a small press conference in which he puts all the inflated agencies and magazine rubbish on a human level: not at all disagreeable, not at all superficial, this Cura, who is really interested in his current assignment.

For money he became a tenor

He was 30 years old when he sniffed the stage air.  At 15 he stood in front of an orchestra for the first time as a conductor.  Then he added singing. “I needed money,” says José Cura, “and as a conductor, I earned nothing. As a singer, I could help out in the choir, sing in the church, in front of the department store with a hat, and pay my rent.  That is the true story.”   Today, he directs for a few which as a singer he would earn in a single evening.  “It is a great experience,” he says.  And he looks forward to the next day, even if it is 16 hours long:  “This is a vacation for the singer – despite the heavy work load.”

He has made a good impression from the ensemble, which hopes the reverse is also true.  What director can easy go to the piano, discuss a scene or demonstrate by singing, discuss the music and then shortly afterwards go into technical talks with the lighting master?  “You must decide whether you want to sound good or look good,” says the tenor who’s the experience as an active opera tenor included shining beside Anna Netrebko at the Cologne Arena and at the Cologne Opera in "Cavalleria Rusticana" and "Pagliacci."

In his staging of Un ballo in maschera he wants to especially thank his dark-skinned Riccardo (Ray M. Wade), for the particular spotlight it throws on racism.  The fact that the director usually receives boos does not bother him.   According to Cura, “With a credible approach and a good ensemble to implement it, I am well prepared.”

A drama about sex, jealousy and politics

 Der Welt

Regine Mueller

11 May 2008

[Computer-Assisted Translation //   Excerpt]

Tenor José Cura directs Giuseppe Verdi’s Masked Ball in Cologne and turns it a play about politics, power, and racism.  An encounter with the man whose singing career began brilliantly but has not always run smoothly…..

For the Argentine singer José Cura the term Testosteronschleuder (testosterone singer) was coined—beautiful and hideous at the same time and impossible to ignore. It was an idiom happily used by magazines: the singer is a disciple of physical fitness, which lends him the extremely attractive appearance of a competitive athlete.  From the press photos we see an audacious, laughing Latin lover, the first gray strands barely affecting the machismo. 

Years ago the Testosteronschleuder was proclaimed the tenor of the 21^st Century, a marketing ploy that did not exactly a bust but did not work out as smoothly as expected.

Three weeks ago, Cura celebrated in Düsseldorf at a public gala.  Now the singer, who among other things studied composition, began as a conductor, and is a photographer, has added another profession in Cologne.   At the opera house he will direct Giuseppe Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera – A masked ball.

[…]

At the doors of the Cologne Opera he waits: José Cura is indeed big and athletic—but the swelling body builder biceps can answer no questions.  He is friendly, reserved yet cordial even while his glowing black [sic] eyes (really!) appraises the reporter with seasoned caution.

The next surprise:  the conversation takes place in the café in the neighboring theater, where no hyena agent waits, only the assistant director sitting there.

Cura is attentive, focused, speaks in fast, efficient English which is remarkably soft-sounding.  He actually has no time, since he is in rehearsal every minute, but he is willing to stop his directing to explain his concept of the Masked Ball and the necessity to transform opera in the 21^st century.  As a representative of the one-dimensional Kulinarik, the word ‘subtext’ passes easily over his lips, as if he is a pioneer in the school of Regietheater.

Indeed, this is not his first time as an opera director, he admits, because he staged Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci in Rijeka, CroatiaDie nächste Überraschung: beim Gespräch im Erfrischungsraum des benachbarten Schauspielhauses lauert keine Agenten-Hyäne, bloß die Regieassistentin sitzt dabei., last year. The offer from Cologne – the planning stages at major stages is known a long time in advance – is already three years old.  The decision to direct an opera is therefore older than the first practical experience with it:  an irony of the international opera business.  At that time, Christoph Dammann offered Cura the Masked Ball and Cura was happy to accept because, he said, “I know the work particularly well. I have sung Riccardo and conducted the work on several occasions.  Now I direct and have done almost everything else.  Perhaps next time I might sing the Amelia…”

Cura’s primary job is ‘theater animal,’ knowing full well that there is more monster than pet in that, yet he presents himself as a professional in a polite, friendly way.  Whether as an experienced singer, now a director, he gives his colleagues on the stage advice is a topic he dismisses almost brusquely, particularly the role of Riccardo which he himself has not sung in twenty years.

He prefers to talk about his staging concept, for which the Riccardo of Cologne ensemble member Ray M. Wade is the linchpin:  “In the first act there is a scene in which the high judge needs Riccardo’s signature for a conviction.  It is for the fortune teller Ulrica who, in the words of the judge is dell' immondo sangue dei negri – from the impure blood of the negro.”

The judge says this tremendous sentence to Riccardo.  “And our Riccardo, Ray M. Wade, is black!  With this sentence, there is an added, explosive effect.  This masked ball is suddenly no longer just a political conspiracy, a plot whose action centers on lies and love, sex and jealousy, but rather a racist conflict that intensifies.” 

For Cura, the attitude of the establishment, to which everyone except the ruler Riccardo belongs, includes Amelia, the woman he adores, and her husband, Renato, by whose hand the governor will die.  It is no coincidence that the large portrait of Riccardo Cura has hung obliquely displays a suspicious similarity between Ray M. Wade and the dictator Idi Amin.

Riccardo is certainly not a positive hero but a broken man whose own violent past and nightmares finally catch up with him.  It is just like Shakespeare, Cura repeats several times, and says that the Mask Ball is not actually about love but power. The only true, selfless love, according to Cura, is found in the page Oscar.

The racial aspect as the cornerstone of the plot is not the only possible interpretation of the Masked ball, but this cast met with his concept of the famous opera quite perfectly, Cura says. He doesn’t want to bludgeon the audience with a sledgehammer, however.  “The conclusion I leave to the audience, along with the question: could all that happened be to cause a black ruler to fall and bring a white government to power?”