But it does contain that duet, and so companies feel obliged to put the work on stage every so often, regardless of its cringingly awful libretto, cardboard-thin characters and scarcely credible plot.
Schoenberg's refusal was based not on an assessment of the extent of the sketches, but on the discovery that the libretto allowed a character to use the highly offensive expression "Saujud", meaning "pig-Jew".
Schoenberg's first theatrical works the one-act Erwartung (1909, first performed 1924; Expectation, single-character libretto by Marie Pappenheim) and the one-act "drama with music" Die glückliche Hand (1924; "The Hand of Fate," his own libretto)—are atonal, thickly Romantic, even Expressionistic (intentionally distorted, so as to express intense and often exaggerated or disquieting emotions).
These three take turns as the rest of the opera's characters: the libretto indicates transformations like "Hotel Manager as Duke" and "Electrician as Lounge Lizard".
True to the identities of the characters, the libretto is mostly sung in English, French and German, and Mr. Puts writes music that effectively evokes the differing national styles and idioms.
Because the libretto specifies that the character Ulrica be "negro" in the American setting, Un ballo in maschera incidentally played a role in the history of African American civil rights.
Billy is continually described by the other characters in the libretto by E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier as a beauty.
The style of 18th-century librettos was exemplified by Pietro Metastasio and by Apostolo Zeno, both of whom aimed at raising libretto standards by banishing comic characters from serious opera and creating a lofty poetic drama.
It didn't always maintain this level, but the libretto did present some distinct characters and covered a lot of ground in two acts of seven scenes each.
But Handel's recitative is also vividly dramatic, and in this production, performed in an excellent (uncredited) English translation of the Italian libretto, the exchanges between the characters provide many of the dramatic high points.
