Though she warmed substantially over the course of the evening, El-Khoury’s voice never quite settled into the heft and cloud-grazing tessitura required of the role, often subsumed by orchestra, chorus and colleagues.
Where does that leave Amelia - the soprano lead, Renato’s wife and Riccardo’s amour? In her role debut on Thursday, the usually superb soprano Joyce El-Khoury sounded somewhat misaligned here. As briefly as he graced the stage, Ricardo José Rivera (as the sailor Silvano) was impressively magnetic, his handsome, rounded baritone leaving an outsized impression. In their conjoined roles as conspirators Samuel and Tom, respectively, bass-baritones Alfred Walker and Kevin Short eked out one of the evening’s few laughs in “Ve’, se di notte qui colla sposa,” though Walker’s cake-rich voice typically outshone his mellower comrade. Soprano Damiana Mizzi is a consistent standout as Riccardo’s treble-voiced page, Oscar, her scintillating “Saper vorreste di che si veste” in Act III both impish and self-serious. No other “Ballo” soloist packs so dense a punch as Matochkina, but other supporting singers come close. The Russian mezzo bundles an evening’s worth of chills into a single scene, her voice a hall-filling revelation of tensile ardor and might. So, to say that Yulia Matochkina is in a class all her own as the brooding prophetess Ulrica isn’t something said lightly. This is crème de la crème casting, as good as it gets in this repertoire.
Tenor Francesco Meli, soprano Damiana Mizzi, conductor Riccardo Muti, baritone Luca Salsi and soprano Joyce El-Khoury, and the orchestra and chorus, in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Jperformance of Verdi's "Un ballo in maschera" at Symphony Center in Chicago.
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