Among the recent offerings at the Metropolitan Opera was Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, or A Masked Ball. This is the opera Verdi wrote in 1859, between Simon Boccanegra and La forza del destino. Ballo is not widely regarded as one of Verdi’s best operas—but it certainly may be regarded as such. It unquestionably contains some of his best music, and he spreads that music around, to the various voices.

For tenor (the part of Gustavo III, or Riccardo—more about that in a moment), he has, among other things, “La rivedrà nell’estasi.” For soprano (the part of Amelia), he has, among other things, “Morrò, ma prima in grazia.” For baritone (Anckarström or Renato), he has “Eri tu”—one of the great monologues. For contralto (Ulrica), he has “Re dell’abisso.” It is very unusual to find a contralto in Verdi, or in anyone. And you may remember that it was as Ulrica that Marian Anderson made her Met debut—thereby breaking the color line in the house.

There is a lot more music in Ballo than the beloved pieces named above. For example, there is one of Verdi’s very best love duets: “Non sai tu che se l’anima mia.” The Met has seen many stirring performances of this duet in its history; one of the most stirring of all ended its centennial gala, in 1983. The duet was sung by Leontyne Price and Luciano Pavarotti; James Levine was in the pit. Get it on DVD if you can—and it should be easy.

The story of Ballo? It is based on real events at the Swedish royal court in the 1790s, and it is nicely handled by the librettist, Antonio Somma (in concert with his composer, of course). The story concerns the usual: love, loyalty, betrayal. And it has operatic touches that may be regarded as ridiculous—disguises, for example. But it’s far from a ridiculous story. It is, indeed, powerful and moving, and it has an ending that scales a height: The king—assassinated by his former best friend, for reasons all can understand—is magnanimous, forgiving, kingly.

Originally, Verdi and Somma set the opera in Sweden itself, giving the characters such names as Gustavo and Anckarström. But the censors of the day were none too pleased with the depiction of a European monarch’s assassination onstage. So Verdi and Somma switched the setting to Boston—yes, Boston, in colonial times—and switched the names as well: For example, Gustavo III became Riccardo, and Anckarström became Renato. The opera is fantastic either way, with the setting making little difference—none, probably. In any case, it was the original, Swedish Ballo that the Met presented.

The tenor in the role of Gustavo was Salvatore Licitra, who, though not yet forty, has something of a place in operatic history—certainly Met history: He filled in for Pavarotti when the senior tenor was to bid farewell to the house. That was in 2002, in Tosca. (Pavarotti would sing his actual farewells two years later.) Journos wanted to write “A Star Is Born,” and did. But Licitra did not perform in very starry a fashion in 2002. Shortly after, he made one of the worst aria albums—frankly, one of the worst albums—ever released. His “people” had no doubt wanted to capitalize on his sudden notoriety. But Licitra has ability, and I’ve heard him sing to the best of that ability a couple of times (in many outings). How did he fare as Gustavo? Decently.

He was lyric-heroic, or heroic-lyric, as the role demands. He seemed a little under the weather, and his intonation was chancy. (Not that you have to be under the weather for your intonation to be chancy.) What he was, mainly, was game: eager and willing, which counts for a lot in opera, more than any other branch of music, I believe. In the love duet, he produced some genuinely Italianate phrases, and, through the night, he gained in strength and security (which is better than going the other way). At the end, Gustavo’s death was noble and moving, as it must be.

Our Amelia had a shaky night, but not an unredeemed one. She was Michèle Crider, an American, and she made some very unfortunate sounds: downright ugly ones. But, like Licitra, she got better—and she was best where it counted most: in that beloved aria, “Morrò, ma prima in grazia.” What’s more, she showed, throughout the opera, a basic musical intelligence, which is always welcome. And I had a funny thought during the love duet (which precedes “Morrò”): It was not well sung—by either party, really, despite what I’ve pointed out about Licitra—but it was well performed. Opera people will surely understand me. In opera, you can make up for bad singing with other ingredients. (In a Schubert sonata, no such luck.)

The star Anckarström in the Met’s run was Dmitri Hvorostovsky, the Russian baritone, or the “Siberian tiger,” as he has been known. But he was doing something else the night I attended, and in that role was Marco Di Felice, an Italian making his Met debut. He proved an Anckarström indeed. He deployed a rich baritone, with some dramatic elements in it. His sound was a tad covered, and I would have had it opened a bit—but it was his sound. He gave us a distinguished “Eri tu,” touching the right note of noble despair. Anckarström is not an out-and-out villain, or a run-of-the-mill murderer. Things are a little more “complicated” than that, as moderns dearly love to say (and once in a while, they’re right).

The Ulrica appears in Act I only, but she can steal the show, as Stephanie Blythe came close to doing. Her voice is a wonder of the world, as you know: low, formidable, and huge. Sometimes that voice is shocking, even if you’ve heard it for years. On this particular evening, she sang some bad notes, and her pitch wandered (as it does). But there was no denying the excitement she generated. Everyone loves a witch, as Ulrica sort of is—and Blythe took full advantage.

Appearing as Oscar, the page, was Ofelia Sala, a soprano from Spain. (Should I mention that this is a trouser role?) I have stated before in these pages that one of the most marked accents in Italian is the Spanish one. Why should this be? I guess because of the similarity between the two languages: Spaniards may be too comfortable to adjust. I have frequently discussed this when writing about Plácido Domingo. In any event, his countrywoman, Señora Sala, sang with a strong Spanish accent—you could hear it on the words “Il re,” for example. But she also sang engagingly, even adorably, if not purely or prettily. And she has this asset: The higher the voice goes, the more beautiful it becomes.

The chorus is an important actor and singer in Un ballo in maschera, as in so many Verdi operas—and the Met Chorus came through admirably. They seem to treat the job with utmost seriousness, as they certainly should. Without professionalism in the chorus, an opera house is pretty much lost.

And I would like to mention the tenor portraying Amelia’s Servant: Charles Anthony. Back when Pavarotti was bidding farewell to the Met—for real, in 2004—Anthony was celebrating his fiftieth anniversary with the company. He must be one of the great comprimario tenors, or character tenors, ever. He has sung at the Met more than anyone else in the 125-year history of the company—about 3,000 times. And do you know what name he was born with? Calogero Antonio Caruso. For some reason, it was thought that he shouldn’t try a tenor career with the name Caruso. So he went with Charles Anthony.

In the pit for Ballo was an Italian with another interesting name: Gianandrea Noseda. And, for an Italian maestro, he has a fairly unusual background: He worked in St. Petersburg. In fact, Valery Gergiev made him principal guest conductor of the Mariinsky Theater. In 2002, he made his Met debut conducting War and Peace (Prokofiev). So, for Signor Noseda, it isn’t all Barbieres, Ballos, and Butterflys.

He led an imperfect Ballo, with some looseness: looseness in the orchestra, and between the pit and the stage. But it was an impassioned Ballo, involving the listener, even gripping him, and holding back nothing. No sense conducting this opera if you’re not going to go all-out (with appropriate musical restraint, of course). In all truthfulness, I don’t remember ever witnessing a more charged-up conductor—I mean, in his physical movements. Noseda could work himself into a mad, musical frenzy. In at least one spot, he was too wild, and too fast—that was in Act II. Sometimes feeling—sensibility—will do the job, rather than speed.

In any case, the Met Orchestra played well for Noseda, with the woodwinds deserving special mention. They have been outstanding all season—and this despite the absence of Ricardo Morales, who was once principal clarinet. He is one of the world’s best on his instrument, and he now works for the Philadelphia Orchestra. Still at the Met is Rafael Figueroa, the principal cello. In Amelia’s aria, “Morrò,” the cello is a kind of co-soloist, and Figueroa performed his role with customary excellence. New York is lucky in its cellists—I mean, its orchestra cellists. Figueroa sits in the Met’s pit, and Carter Brey sits in the New York Philharmonic. This is “luxury casting” (orchestral version).

The Met’s production of Ballo is by Piero Faggioni, dating from 1990. (The production, I mean, not Faggioni.) It is grand, sumptuous, and, in my view, fitting. It is also no favorite of critics, who tend to find it bloated, “traditional,” and assorted other bad things. They are baying for its replacement, as for the replacement of many other Met productions. I will grant that Act III, Scene 2, is a little monumental. But monumentality is not the biggest sin you can commit in a Verdi opera. And the melting of that scene into the final one—the king’s study into the whirling, fateful party—is one of the most thrilling things I have ever seen on a stage. Faggioni handles it with an indisputably masterly touch.

I recall the Butterfly directed by Anthony Minghella at the beginning of last season. Minghella told The New York Times, “I don’t want to produce ‘grand opera,’ but the opposite.” Fine. There are a million venues for Minghella’s kind of opera. But the Met?

Around the time they revived Un ballo in maschera, the Met also staged a Hansel and Gretel, directed by Richard Jones. His is an interesting H&G, meritorious in some respects. But … well, let me tell you just two things. There is no gingerbread house. That is very far from a crime, but, as I remarked after Opening Night, a self-respecting modern director would no sooner put a gingerbread house in Hansel and Gretel than he would a rainbow bridge in Das Rheingold. (In Salzburg last year, I saw a Rheingold that lacked just such a bridge.) They call these things “clichés.” And, as an old southern friend of mine would have said, “Putting in a gingerbread house or a rainbow bridge would be too much like right.”

Also, the kids at the end of Jones’s Hansel and Gretel turn cannibal—eating the witch. Yup, they gnaw on her, just as one and all are giving thanks to God for their salvation. Heigh-ho.

In this same period, the Met revived Die Walküre, in the Otto Schenk production. This is another production that is considered “traditional,” “literal,” “old-fashioned,” “out-of-date”—you know the lexicon. It will go, along with its Ring siblings, and other honorable Met productions. I sense that these shows are on a kind of farewell tour: Wave goodbye to them. We all favor change, of course—nobody likes a fogey. But what kind of change will it be? I think of the hoary admonition “First, do no harm.” Is the Met to be Europeanized (in a word)? Will the Met be made to get with the program, joining the trendsetters in productions that merrily subvert the operas they treat? If so, the Met will be less the Met than it was.

But, just as there’s a lot of ruin in a nation, there’s a lot of ruin in the Metropolitan Opera. Right?

Back to Verdi, for a closing note, and a personal one: People say, “The older I get, the smarter my parents become.” And I now say, “The older I get, the smarter Verdi becomes.” In my youth, I was a bit snobbish about him—could barely stand all those oom-pah-pahs and so on. It has taken some maturity to see his greatness. He had limitations, of course, but the old boy knew a lot: about music, and about life.

Here is an abrupt change of gears: Ross Lee Finney. Do you know him? He was an American composer, born in Minnesota in 1906. He taught for many years at the University of Michigan, dying in 1997. As a young man, he studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and Alban Berg in Vienna—an interesting, and effective, pedagogical combination. He wrote a variety of music, including six piano sonatas, four symphonies, and eight string quartets. There is also an unfinished opera: A Computer Marriage. That would have been something to see.

In the course of his career, Finney wrote two song cycles: Poor Richard, to words by Benjamin Franklin (of course); and Chamber Music. The second cycle sets the James Joyce work of the same name. And it was performed one Saturday afternoon in the Bruno Walter Auditorium of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts—which is at Lincoln Center.

Joyce wrote the thirty-six poems of his Chamber Music in 1905, when he was twenty-three. (To be perfectly precise, he wrote thirty-four of them in 1905, adding the final two before the work was published in 1907.) As Richard Dyer told us listeners in New York—more about how the afternoon worked in a moment—the poems are a kind of Schöne Müllerin. They tell of love longed for, gained, and lost, bitterly. (I simplify.) Joyce used these poems for practice, to teach himself how to write poetry. Later, he was somewhat embarrassed by them. But you and I would not be embarrassed, I believe: At a minimum, they show a big lyric gift.

And they have been turned to by composers, as the poet desired. Joyce himself, remember, composed a little music. Lee Hoiby incorporated some of it in his unusual and accomplished piano quartet, Dark Rosaleen. Individual poems from Chamber Music have been set by Szymanowski, Berio, Dallapiccola, and Barber, among others. Indeed, Barber’s “Sleep Now” and “I Hear an Army” are two of the most famous songs in the American repertory. But Ross Lee Finney is the only one to have set all thirty-six poems. He did so in 1951, the midpoint of the century and, in a way, the midpoint of Finney’s career. As Dyer informed us, the composer never wrote tonally again.

And tonal or not, there are touches of modernism in Finney’s Chamber Music. It is an absorbing and impressive work, both in its components—the individual songs—and in its entirety. Finney writes economically, while giving himself all the tools needed to express the ideas at hand. As Joyce shifts mood, so does Finney. The songs are composed in what I can only describe as a half-French, half-American style—a not-unfamiliar style to us: Think of Ned Rorem, for example.

Performing Chamber Music in the Bruno Walter Auditorium were Judith Kellock, soprano, and Janice Weber, pianist. Kellock studied with the late mezzo Jan DeGaetani, and she now teaches at Cornell. She is rather like her teacher: smart, tasteful, directly communicative. In the Finney work, she showed a secure technique, a technique built for the long haul. (Kellock is not a beginner.) Throughout the cycle, she sang with clear diction, and a refinement that did not allow for fussiness or affectation. As I listened to her, and looked at her, I found that she reminded me of an actress. I couldn’t think who. Later, it dawned on me: Jane Alexander.

Janice Weber is a multitalented woman with a multifaceted career. She is a pianist of considerable virtuosity, and she likes to tackle the hardest repertory. She also likes to tackle the most obscure repertory—for example, she will champion Leo Ornstein and Sigfrid Karg-Elert (who is known for one piece: a march for organ). (And a damn fine piece it is.) In other hours of her day, Weber writes novels, of very entertaining sorts. In Chamber Music, she did not have the opportunity to show off the full extent of her technique—but she had the opportunity to show her musicianship, which proved very sound. Moreover, she and the soprano worked well together, remaining in balance. And this balance was as much mental as anything else.

Richard Dyer is a music critic and scholar, and he was present to tell the audience about the work—both the music and the text—and to read the poems. Here’s how it went down: Dyer would read a group of the thirty-six poems; and then the soprano and pianist would perform the songs.

Readers of this journal are well acquainted with my bias against a lot of talk during concerts. I have often said, “The most dreaded hyphenated word in the English language is ‘concert-lecture.’” So it won’t surprise you that I would have preferred program notes—written by Richard Dyer—and the text: that is, Joyce’s poems, handily printed. The recitation of the poems lengthened the afternoon; audience members regularly dropped out. In addition, I believe it was difficult for the cycle to achieve a dream-like state, interrupted as it was.

But: Dyer is a very knowledgeable and skillful man who did an excellent job. And most people, I suspect, like some talking from the stage, or at least do not object. Furthermore, the interruptions gave the soprano a chance to rest, in this long and challenging work.

A couple of footnotes to end on, if I may: The twelfth poem of Chamber Music begins, “What counsel has the hooded moon/ Put in thy heart, my shyly sweet,/ Of Love in ancient plenilune …” Dyer informed us that Tolkien regarded plenilune as the most beautiful word in the English language. I myself rather like California (a proper noun, I realize). And Bill Buckley once told me what his friend Whittaker Chambers thought the most beautiful sentence in English—it was fashioned by Gertrude Stein: “Toasted Susie is my ice cream.”

And a personal note, or another one, I should say: I was perhaps especially interested in hearing a major work by Ross Lee Finney because, years ago, when I was a boy—more like an adolescent, really—I played for him. Played a piano concerto—not one of his own, but one of Beethoven’s. I don’t remember why Finney was in the room. And all I remember about him is that he seemed cerebral and exacting. He commanded respect, in a quiet, unwilled way. Something like the same might be said of his Chamber Music.