There’s no two ways about it: A remarkable chapter in the history of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra closes next week.

No, not the end of Riccardo Muti’s directorship — that’s been extended until next June. But a major pillar of his tenure sunsets with Giuseppe Verdi’s “Un ballo in maschera” (“A Masked Ball”), the fifth, and final, Verdi opera presented by Muti, the CSO and the Chicago Symphony Chorus at Orchestra Hall.

A superlative Verdian, Muti has cradled the Italian master’s music close to the CSO since assuming his post in 2010. In doing so, he’s single-handedly inaugurated a golden era of opera at Orchestra Hall unseen since the Solti years.

“Ballo” is based on the real-life 1792 assassination of the Swedish king Gustav III at a masquerade ball. However, Verdi’s original concept was blocked repeatedly by Neapolitan and Roman censors, who forbade scenes of regicide onstage — no matter that Verdi’s “Gustavo” was an enlightened despot. Only by transplanting the action to 17th century Boston, and replacing King Gustav with a colonial governor, could the composer circumvent censorship.

As Riccardo, Verdi’s Gustavo stand-in, tenor Francesco Meli sings with a brassy, athletic brilliance, his tenor easily carrying over the CSO and chorus. He was most affecting in arias revealing Riccardo’s insecurities, like the imploring, barcarolle-like “Di’ tu se fedele” in Act I, or “È scherzo od è follia,” in which Riccardo laughs off Ulrica’s grim prophecy.

As his friend-turned-foe Renato, Luca Salsi was a cool silver to Meli’s bronze, his baritone bold, flexible and forged into sharp points when necessary. His “Eri tu che macchiavi quell’anima” — the Act III aria in which Renato vows revenge against Riccardo, with not-so-subtle nods to the final scene of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” — offered a spectrum of expression, from free-flowing laments to gritted-teeth fury.

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 June 23, 2022 performance of Verdi's "Un ballo in maschera" at Symphony Center in Chicago. (Todd Rosenberg / HANDOUT)

This is crème de la crème casting, as good as it gets in this repertoire. So, to say that Yulia Matochkina is in a class all her own as the brooding prophetess Ulrica isn’t something said lightly. 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.

No other “Ballo” soloist packs so dense a punch as Matochkina, but other supporting singers come close. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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. She thrilled most in the smoky depths of her range, intimate moments which seemed to shrink the hall instead of straining to fill its expanse.

But El-Khoury was also behind the evening’s most stunning moment, a time-stopping “Morrò, ma prima in grazia” that unhooded the emotional buffer between her and the audience. Amelia grieves the threat of death less for herself than for her young son, and El-Khoury embodies that sentiment with the shellshocked hollowness of a woman imagining a future too terrible to fathom. Principal cellist John Sharp, his lines tender but never coddling, supported sublimely.

Tenor Francesco Meli, soprano Damiana Mizzi, conductor Riccardo Muti, baritone Luca Salsi and soprano Joyce El-Khoury in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s June 23, 2022 performance of Verdi's "Un ballo in maschera" at Symphony Center in Chicago. (Todd Rosenberg / HANDOUT)

At the end of the aria, Muti and orchestra’s final cadence sounded existentially spent, unfathomable grief and resignation packed into an E-flat minor triad. To hear this “Morrò” was to be humbled, and to hold it close for a lifetime.

That said, Muti’s control doesn’t seem to come without being, well, controlling. Some micromanaged moments stood out, like Muti beating through the apex of El-Khoury’s ascending line just before her cadenza in “Ecco l’orrido campo ove s’accoppia,” or signaling Salsi’s ornaments with his head in “Eri tu …” Reserve that clenched interpretive hand for the orchestra — which bore fabulous fruits, especially in a stirring, characterful Overture and hair-raising opening to Act I, Scene 2.

Prepared by guest director Donald Palumbo, the chorus master of the Metropolitan Opera, the Chicago Symphony Chorus interpreted “Ballo’s” choruses nobly and immersively, the occasional articulation issue in lower voices aside.

Those who have seen “Ballo,” especially in recent years, will notice two conspicuous changes, supported by the soon-to-be-published critical edition used in these performances. In Verdi’s manuscript, Riccardo’s final line is clipped by the performance marking “La voce gli manca” — roughly, “his voice gives out” — but subsequent editions have scooted that direction a bar later, letting the star tenor luxuriate on a wall-rattling B-flat. In his CSO performances, Meli performs the line more literally, its peak choked off with a guttural gasp.

Curtain call for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s June 23, 2022 performance of Verdi's "Un ballo in maschera" at Symphony Center in Chicago. (Todd Rosenberg / HANDOUT)

The other change, at “Ballo’s” beginning, is more charged. Colonial Boston’s pilgrim fervor, witch-hunt paranoia and trenchant racism all find their antithesis in Ulrica, who, in the spitting words of a Judge (tenor and Ryan Opera Center fellow Lunga Eric Hallam, in a brief but commanding recitative), is “of filthy Black blood.” For decades, productions have replaced the line, most recently, even at Milan’s august Teatro alla Scala, in a production featuring Meli, Salsi and Matochkina in the same roles.

Not Muti. As the music director emphasized in a dress rehearsal, not only do other characters swiftly come to Ulrica’s defense, but the line is crucial to the opera’s context. If anything, its inclusion condemns the Judge as a racist more than it does Verdi.

But the CSO itself appears to have broken with Muti on this point somewhat, with a libretto translation scrubbing away the very adjective (“immondo,” filthy or vile) which lends the line much of its violent, slur-like edge. Self-defeating censorship seems to remain “Ballo’s” curse, even with an obsessively faithful director at the helm.

The CSO’s own internal contradictions there spotlight the shortcomings of Muti’s concert operas. On Verdi nights, it’s been unclear how much onstage context is really welcome at Symphony Center. The soloists themselves seemed split on Thursday: Even in a non-staged setting, Salsi and Mizzi acted compellingly, subtly but effectively aligning their onstage delivery to the plot, while Meli and El-Khoury sang essentially sans gesture.

Committing to a concept halfway leaves audiences in the lurch. I use “concept” knowingly, and knowing full well that these concert operas are, in many respects, Muti’s very attempt to sidestep Konzept. Muti’s ideal, Platonic though it may be, is to perform Verdi’s music free from the whims of ham-fisted stage directors. But all too often, as the Judge’s controversial line proves, these concert operas become wholly untethered from context. That in itself is a choice — and a strong one, at that.

Here’s my perspective, fixed, as it is, toward the future. (We’re only moving one direction, aren’t we?) The days are numbered when one can defensibly cast a white singer as a Black character, like Matochkina’s Ulrica. When one can conduct singers like they’re flesh-and-bone sections of the orchestra instead of soloists. When one can argue that nothing else matters so long as the music-making is heavenly, regardless of the earthly flotsam left bobbing in the wake of that pursuit.

But for now, and until next June? The chorus says it themselves at the end of Act I.

“Muti Conducts Verdi Un ballo in maschera” continues through June 28 in Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave.; cso.org

Hannah Edgar is a freelance writer.

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