Verdi's Un ballo in maschera, born from a real royal assassination and disguised to outwit the censors, returns to Covent Garden in a new staging by Philipp Stölzl.
Philipp Stölzl’s new production of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera opens on the Main Stage at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden on Monday 30 November 2026. The opera draws on a real royal assassination.
Verdi wanted to write about the killing of Gustav III of Sweden, shot at a masked ball in Stockholm in 1792. In 1858 the censors in Naples refused a king murdered on stage, weeks after an Italian had thrown a bomb at Napoleon III.
Verdi moved the opera to Rome and turned the king into a colonial governor in Boston, Massachusetts. It opened in that disguise in February 1859 and was a hit. Most houses now restore the Swedish setting.
He wrote it between Simon Boccanegra and La forza del destino. The score sets comedy and tragedy in the same music, and the role of the page is written for a soprano.
Jakub Hrůša conducts the run to Friday 18 December, his second new production of the autumn after Parsifal.
Charles Castronovo, Malin Byström, Aleksei Isaev, Anita Rachvelishvili and Kseniia Nikolaieva sing the principal roles.