THIS production showcases Opera Australia’s ravishing  chorus, orchestra and principals at their very finest, performing under the baton of Andrea Molino. 

With the addition of Mexican tenor Diego Torre as the king  Gustavo  and international artists Mariana Pentcheva as the fortune teller and Tamar Iveri as the chief love interest,  Amelia, you could  just close your eyes and be transported there by the brilliant, passionate music.

But if you did, you’d be missing out on something extraordinary, as Spanish director Alex Ollé and his team of designers  venture a futuristic interpretation of this work that has nothing whatsoever to do with politics in historical Sweden. In fact it turns out that even Verdi  wasn’t much  interested in Swedish politics and took his inspiration from a number of sources.

Ollé, best known to us from the Barcelona company La Fura Dels Baus, has conceived a pessimistic tale  of urban unrest, deception, backstabbing, and passionate adultery.

The libretto, visible throughout in the projected surtitles, suggest that he  is on the right track.  Very few words to the opera deal with a specific location, a fact Ollé seizes upon to thrust the action into a strange netherworld of masks masked apparatchiks, ragged urchins and revolutionaries, superstition and uncontrolled lust.

Extraordinary lighting and digital effects by Georg Weit and Chris Twyman, conjure up the cosmos, the human body and even the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

The result is sensational, but it is not without cost.

For one thing, with principal actors masked for all but the most revealing moments, it’s hard to work out who’s who. Although no doubt there is some point in having a change of masks for the actual masked ball in the final act, this too is confusing.

The more obvious problem, however–I would say this for productions by English director Christopher Alden too–is that the near- Stalinist visuals  cut across the lyricism of Verdi.

In the end, Ollé makes a virtue of this by insinuating a new ending, quite outside the libretto. You’ll have to see it to understand this, but this production of “A Masked Ball”  offers no promise of  a brave new world.