{"id":298289,"date":"2025-11-21T21:30:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T21:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/298289\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T21:30:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T21:30:17","slug":"balls-review-ace-this-battle-of-the-sexes-tennis-opera-is-a-winner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/298289\/","title":{"rendered":"Balls review \u2014 Ace! This Battle of the Sexes tennis opera is a winner"},"content":{"rendered":"

All that was missing was the gold, flamingo-feathered throne and the pig. Balls (yes, hilarious title) is Laura Karpman\u2019s opera based on the 1973 Battle of the Sexes tennis match, when the former world No 1 Billie Jean King beat the former US champion Bobby Riggs in three straight sets to win $100,000 and a symbolic victory for women\u2019s sport. <\/p>\n

First heard in the US in 2017 (the same year a Hollywood movie came out about the match), Balls arrived at the Royal Festival Hall for the world premiere of its full orchestral version by the Philharmonia. And it was a blast. Ricocheting between helter-skelter, high-energy sequences and reflective passages in a thoroughly entertaining way, Karpman and the librettist Gail Collins\u2019s opera remains true to the match\u2019s theatrical spirit, even if at times its important, deeper message risked tipping into earnest emoting.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The tennis Battle of the Sexes is now an opera<\/a><\/p>\n

Still, from the moment the ensemble chorus arrived on stage in tennis whites, stretching and limbering up while a montage of women\u2019s sports played on the video backdrop, it was clear this would be a fun 45 minutes. Performers stalked the aisles, the London Voices brandished placards with slogans such as \u201cLibbers not Lobbers\u201d in the choir stalls, and innuendo-laden adverts gave us a slice of 1970s life. An introductory message from King saluted the evening\u2019s trailblazing conductor Marin Alsop and noted that the music world still has a way to go on gender equality.<\/p>\n

\"Nikola<\/p>\n

Nikola Printz as Billie Jean King<\/p>\n

\u00a9 PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA\/MARC GASCOIGNE<\/p>\n

Karpman\u2019s score is vibrant, lively and genre-blending, at its best during the tennis match itself when she loops tennis ball thwacks to create rhythmic drive, gets the orchestra clapping and sends the percussion section into overdrive. Just before the final showdown, the action cuts away to an interlude, giving a potted history of the fight for women\u2019s votes. Does it lay on the message too thick? Perhaps, but Eve Pearson Maxwell\u2019s performance as the women\u2019s rights activist Susan B Anthony was convincing. And the post-match \u201cmoral of the story\u201d, with a dash of \u201cwhat happened next\u201d, wraps things up in movie style.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Read more opera reviews, guides and interviews<\/a><\/p>\n

Nicky Spence gave a brilliant turn as the smiling Riggs, the \u201cself-proclaimed chauvinist pig\u201d, sporting a yellow \u201cSugar Daddy\u201d jacket, Teflon-coated in his belief that women should be in the kitchen rather than on the court. King, in contrast, is focused and introspective, feeling the pressure to be twice as good as any guy, and Nikola Printz soared powerfully and fearlessly in the role. Over a woozy orchestral accompaniment, Lotte Betts-Dean turned on the seductive charm as Marilyn Barnett, the secretary with whom King had a secret relationship.<\/p>\n

Before this all-American feast, a slice of pure English eccentricity. Walton\u2019s Fa\u00e7ade, with its whimsical wordplay and tongue-twisting verses, put Spence, Printz and Betts-Dean through their enunciation paces, backed by a handful of Philharmonia players. They took on this virtuosic feat and, for the most part, won.
\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All that was missing was the gold, flamingo-feathered throne and the pig. Balls (yes, hilarious title) is Laura…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-298289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}