29-07-2025
Mixing opera and politics
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Poster for the Wellington Opera production of Verdi's "A Masked Ball".
Photo:
Wellington Opera
Verdi had to jump through a lot of hoops to stage his opera, "A Masked Ball".
The idea seemed operatic enough. The intrigue surrounding the assassination of the 18th-century monarch King Gustavo III of Sweden, but the 19th-century censors had other ideas.
To have someone shooting a royal just wouldn't do. They forced Verdi to set the opera in Boston in the USA, where there were no kings or queens to assassinate.
Next month,
Wellington Opera
will stage the original uncensored version of "A Masked Ball" with Jared Holt playing King Gustavo and soprano Madeleine Pierard taking on the lead female role, Amelia.
Pierard and conductor Brian Castles-Onion spoke to RNZ Concert's Bryan Crump ahead of
a three-performance season at the Wellington Opera House
starting on 6 August.
It's still a rarely staged opera, not because of its politics, but because it's long. Not Wagner long, but still taking three acts with two intervals.
Australian conductor, Brian Castles-Onion
Photo:
Wellington Opera
Castles-Onion, however, thinks it's one of Verdi's best. And he thinks Pierard is one of the best-qualified sopranos to take on the lead role of Amelia; a married woman who has fallen for King Gustavo who, unfortunately for her, is not the man she's married to.
It's the second year in a row that Pierard and Castles-Onion have featured in Wellington Opera Company productions. Last year Pierard played the title role in Tosca, while Castles-Onion directed Orchestra Wellington in the pit.
The company has established a reputation for high-quality productions made without any support from the Government arts funding body, Creative New Zealand.
Castles-Onion says he loves the vibe at Wellington Opera.
The Australian-based maestro certainly loves conducting opera, with hundreds of performances to his name.
He prefers the orchestra pit to the concert hall podium because he loves the human voice.
Madeleine Pierard
Photo:
Robert Cato
Pierard prefers the stage to the concert hall because of her love of acting. For her, the challenge as a singer who is a good actor is to keep the body from getting in the way of her singing - given the acting and the music come from the same place.
A good singer doesn't have to contort their body to get the message across, she says. Let the voice flow and the music will bring out the drama.
