Among the complexities of musical theater are many kinds of battles. Some of them take place onstage, in the plot, and some - fueled by temperament, taste, and ego - are fought backstage before the performance ever starts. By far the most fascinating to watch are those that develop during a performance, when some elements of the production clash with the intentions of author and composer, or the work of the performers, or with both. It is a characteristic of such a struggle that it tends to bring out the best, or the worst, in those concerned.
During a performance of Rigoletto at London's Royal Opera House, I witnessed a classic among such trials, in which the forces of light - represented by Verdi's music and the Brilliant young woman who conducted it - triumphed, so to speak, over the forces of artistic darkness embodied in a grossly misconceived (with one or two exceptions) indifferently sung production.
Verdi's creation of Rigoletto was haunted by conflict. Adapted from a politically explosive Victor Hugo play, Le roi s'amuse, the project ran a gamut of censorship, being first banned altogether by the Austrian Empire's Department of Public Order and then subjected to revisions that almost caused Verdi to drop the work. After certain compromises that allowed him to go ahead, he composed the opera over several months of creative excitement, while the librettist Francesco Maria Piave Battled with the authorities.
Hugo's provocative drama of the grim jester Triboulet and the seduction of his daughter by a cruel king was transformed by Piave into the ugly tale of a debauched Duke of Mantua and his jester Rigoletto: After a courtier's daughter is seduced by the Duke, Rigoletto mocks the girl's father who curses him. The curse is then worked out through the Duke's seduction of Rigolett's murderous revenge, she allows herself to be murdered by the hired assassin. The malicious jester, broken by grief, is left to weep over his daughter's body.
In order to capture and express the passion and horror of this story, Verdi composed a score that bent and sometimes broke the prevailing (and somewhat hidebound) conventions of opera, embracing and extraordinary range of direct and complex emotions, forming a drama of unprecedented raw force and human depths -in both senses of that word. Properly staged and sung, Rigoletto retains its tremendous impact almost a century and a half after it was composed.
Aseptic Environment
Possibly misled by the Victor Hugo background of this work, the Spanish director Nuria Espert (whose work in straight theater has been often exciting and skilled) decided to give the opera a mid-nineteenth-century setting. This placed the cast in huge Corinthian-columned marble "palazzo" that resembled nothing so much as a Pall Mall men's club. In this rather aseptic environment, singer Brent Ellis had the impossible task of portraying a jester at a time when such characters had long since ceased to exist. (Even without this handicap, his performance suffered from a lugubrious conception of the role; it must be possible to imagine a jester as being funny at some time or other, and this ashen-faced, thoroughly sour persona excluded any potential for laughter.) Indifferent dancing girls in such a setting, wearing can-can costumes, appeared both silly and anachronistic, while the libretto's talk of debauchery and
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