In 2022, Riccardo Muti rang down the curtain on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra season with concert performances of Verdi’s singularly scintillating chiaroscuro melodrama Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball). Characteristically, he put on a clinic, beaming his laser on the infinite facets of a diamond-cut score. Apart from the individual listener’s reservations about this singer or that singer, the experience left nothing to be desired. Still and all, Verdi composed for the opera house, and the maestro’s rightful place from which to cast his spell is the podium of the “mystic gulf.” At the Teatro Regio, an institution Muti is finding congenial in his golden years, the 82-year-old superstar now reprises Ballo in a new production with a virtually all-new and in several cases improved cast. Andrea de Rosa, an artist of philosophical leanings, directs. The stage designs are by Nicolas Bovey, a versatile and inventive pro disinclined to overplay his hand, with Iliaria Ariemme onboard as mistress of the wardrobe. Facing off as best friends torn apart by their love for the same woman, the tenor Pietro Pretti and the baritone Luca Micheletti back up Cinecittà charisma with vocality recalling the La Scala of yesteryear. The soprano Lidia Fridman is the hapless apex of the love triangle, the mezzo Alla Pozniak the all-seeing fortune teller powerless to avert the tragedy. The sole holdover from Chicago is the sparkling coloratura soprano Damiana Mizzi as the frolicsome pageboy Oscar. —Matthew Gurewitsch