Opera review: Un ballo in maschera — from a fine Verdian force

David Pountney relinquishes the top job at Welsh National Opera at the end of this season, after holding senior posts with three of our leading opera companies — director of productions at Scottish Opera and English National Opera, and chief executive and artistic director of WNO — since 1975. It’s a remarkable record, incorporating some of the most memorable opera stagings the country has seen in the past 40 or so years: his unforgettable five-opera Janacek cycle for WNO/SO, the same composer’s Osud and The Diary of One Who Disappeared, Dvorak’s Rusalka, Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Prokofiev’s The Gambler for ENO. It’s an impressive legacy, not to mention his prolific international career or his eye-catching stewardship of the Bregenz festival, in Austria (2003-14).