Rigoletto
Act 1, Scene 1
San Francisco Opera
Photo: Cory Weaver
I spent a lot of time over the last week with Giuseppe Verdi, in the form of two of his middle period masterpieces, Rigoletto and La traviata. What these operas have in common is the intense parent-child relationships, a major theme in the composer's Simon Boccanegra and Don Carlo(s) as well.
San Francisco Opera just ended a top-notch run of Rigoletto, seen once more in the great Michael Yeargan production, the design of which is based on the works of Giorgio de Chirico. I've seen several of the bring-ups and it never fails to impress me. It is both shadowy and beautiful, its colors a little artificial, its architecture askew. Its lurid colors embody the decadence of the Duke of Mantua's court and the haunted spirit of the opera, where an assassin has the closest thing to a clearly-defined moral code. José Maria Condemi directed and did a terrific job with it.
My recollection is that the production has gotten a bit less decadent over the years; I have vague memories of women in breast-baring body suits and sexual behavior in the first half of Act 1 that ah went way beyond flirtation. I can understand why the Opera might have wanted to tone it down, but the atmosphere at court does justify that degree of decadence. Regardless, I love this production and as far as I'm concerned SFO can use it until I'm dead and gone.
In any event, this was a bring-up for the ages. I don't think of Rigoletto as being a conductor's opera, because the work is so great that it will be effective with a merely competent conductor, yet Eun Sun Kim made it a conductor's opera. I could hardly believe the range of colors she got out of the orchestra, the perfect rubato, the drama, the way the silences rang with tension. To me, her conducting sounded deeply informed by her Wagner conducting, which has been awesome in the last two seasons. This was just spectacular Verdi.
On to the singing. The originally-scheduled Duke, Giovanni Sala, dropped out in early August for the usual "personal reasons." I was not very impressed with Yongzhau Yu, who stepped in. He went sharp a lot; his voice is on the tight, thin, side; he didn't project the kind of allure that the Duke should have for both Gilda and Maddalena to become so attached to him. I realize that with Sala dropping out so close to the start of rehearsals, it would have been difficult to find a first-class replacement because all the best tenors are booked solid at the start of a season.
I liked Amartuvshin Enkhbat's Rigoletto well enough. He has a tremendous voice of the right type, both powerful and beautiful. He is a little emotionally stiff and not a great physical actor, but his singing was first class.
Adela Zaharia, last heard as Donna Anna in the last SFO Don Giovanni, was the vocal star of the show, singing a really spectacular Gilda and presenting her as a more stubborn and self-assured character than you usually get. I will say that I do not expect to hear the role more beautifully sung than Ruth Ann Swenson back in the late 1990s –– Swenson had possibly the most beautiful lyric soprano voice I've ever heard –– but Zaharia has a much better dramatic sense and made a lot out of Gilda.
In the smaller roles, Peixin Chen was a fantastic, threatening Sparafucile, and Adler Fellow Olivier Zerouali made a huge impression on me as Marullo.
And then there was J'Nai Bridges as a sexy Maddalena, with tons more character than the usual Maddalena in that role, largely because, face it, she is a big star who has sung Carmen and a major role in Girls of the Golden West with SFO. You're not alone in wondering what she was doing in Rigoletto, so let's just chalk it up to luxury casting.
All in all, it was a very satisfying Rigoletto.
- Steven Winn, SFCV and SF Chronicle
- Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle
- Charlise Tiee, Opera Tattler
- Patrick Vaz, The Reverberate Hills. Patrick's analysis of the role of honor in the opera is important to understanding how everyone behaves here, and I love his description of the sets. However, I've been privately arm-wrestling with him about Gilda for roughly as long as we've known each other. I think it's a misnomer to say that she "has sex with the Duke;" given her overprotected upbringing, what do we think she even knows about sex? Does she understand it well enough to give consent? She is extremely upset, and I don't think it's just shame, when she comes out of the room where she was locked up with the Duke. It's also worth keeping in mind that while she talks about going up to Heaven while she's dying, that's partly in relation to her dead mother, who she thinks is watching over her and whom she will join in Heaven. Being perverse and self-defeating is one thing; letting yourself be killed (SPOILER SORRY) in place of the awful man you're in love with is quite another.
Avery Boettcher (Violetta) and Brad Bickhardt (Alfred)
La traviata, Livermore Valley Opera
Act 2, last scene
Photo: Barbara Mallon
Then there was La traviata at Livermore Valley Opera where, once again, you get those very intense and overwhelming family relationships. In this case, Giorgio Germont shows up in Act 2 to do whatever he can to separate his son Alfredo from the woman he loves, because she is a former courtesan and Alfredo's involvement with her, which is very public, is about to wreck Alfredo's sister's engagement and the family's reputation. The Germonts are bourgeoisie, as far as I can tell; after all, if they were noble, Alfredo would get a little talking-to about being less public, but nobody would try to separate him from his lover. (See Baron Duophol, Violetta's once and future patron, for example.)
We've got more singing about life in Heaven here, when Violetta asks Germont to remember her to Alfredo's sister ("Dite alla giovine"), because Violetta, who is dying of tuberculosis, will watch over the sister from Heaven.
The big star of La traviata was, beyond a doubt, the spectacular Avery Boettcher, who gave a fabulous, three-dimensional, beautifully sung performance as Violetta. The character is on stage for about 90% of the opera, the exception being the scene in Act 2 where Germont tells Alfredo why he's better off without Violetta, so it's possible for the Violetta to pretty much carry the whole opera. That is more or less what happens here. I'd say that Boettcher is worth the price of admission for her tour-de-force performance, and you know, it's great to see opera at the Bankhead Theater, because it is tiny and small details of a performance register strongly.
What I got from seeing these two operas in close proximity was a renewed respect for and love of middle-period Verdi. Yes, these operas are done too often; yes, the casts are not always first class; yes, yes, yes, but they are as popular as they are because of how brilliantly put together they are, how well Verdi creates drama, how well he sets the text, how vivid his characterizations are, the emotions they bring up for the audience.
- Lisa Hirsch, SFCV
- Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle. "Most mesmerizing was her commanding traversal of Act 3, from a wrenching “Addio del passato” through Violetta’s quavering death throes."
3 comments:
I usually experience my operas from the pit (or in the case of this Rigoletto, as part of the backstage Act 1 banda), but my wife had an extra ticket on Saturday, and I wasn't called for the banda, so on about my 40th or 50th performance of this opera, I actually saw my first Rigoletto as an audience member.
I concur with most of what you say about the production and the performance. I was very impressed with pretty much everything: the baritone and soprano leads, the orchestral polish and balance, the effectiveness of the minimalist staging. Since I don't follow the personnel as you do, I wasn't aware that the tenor was a late replacement. I thought he was appalling, nowhere near the level of virtually everything else in this production. It's hard for me to imagine that they couldn't have found someone better.
Overall, my newbie experience of Rigoletto was deflating, though. It just hit a little too close to home: the rapey, murdery despot who gets away with everything. Rigoletto gets comeuppance basically for being an asshole (okay, maybe worse, maybe he's the Steven Miller of this story) by having his daughter murdered. Harsh! (For a person who makes his living as a jester, he's about the least funny person ever.) Gilda: just another victim (abducted, maybe raped, murdered, all while being pure and innocent). The actual murderer also goes unpunished. He's a professional murderer, though; it would be kind of an occupational hazard if he was actually held responsible for just doing his job, I guess. It was interesting that his professional ethics allowed him to substitute a different victim, any different victim, and still be okay with the job he did.
I could have used a little more justice, and little less having my face rubbed in the nightmare that Americans (and many others around the world) are currently experiencing. I understand that the original source material came from a Victor Hugo play about an actual French king, which was considered so scandalous that it was banned, in spite of said king having died 300 years previously. I'm glad that (unlike Hugo) we can talk about these things now, and hope that that freedom continues, though I'm pretty nervous on that score.
Generally, when opera works for me, it is because it crystallizes human emotions and situations in the powerfully concentrated way that only great music and great singing can do. This time, in spite of enjoying and admiring the music and most of the singing, it left me deflated.
Thank you so much for the extensive comment!
Yes, it's interesting that there wasn't a better replacement for Sala. I think that there isn't an Adler Fellow with the right voice type right now; both Samuel White and Thomas Kinch sound like budding spinto or dramatic tenors.
The plot is truly appalling, because Rigoletto, the Duke, and the whole court are amoral and wicked. I wonder whether Sparafucile does get some comeuppance; does Rigoletto seek revenge against him? We can't know.
The Hugo play is "Le Roi s'amuse" and some day I might read it.
"...the intense parent-child relationships..." Also Aida, also Il Trovatore, also Luisa Miller, also Verdi's great unrealized project Il Re Lear. Most of these are father/daughter, but Traviata is father/prospective daughter-in-law, Don Carlos is father/son, and Trovatore is mother/son.
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