When all the elements are right, and everything fits into place, nothing can quite touch opera for visceral, emotional, and aesthetic impact. This is a rare occasion, but it has been known to happen, as anyone attending the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Rigoletto can happily attest.
Perhaps the most accessible of Verdi's operas, the story of an overprotective father - the hunchback Rigoletto - who kills the thing he loves (his daughter Gilda), is an emotional powerhouse. If you are drawn into it, it can wring dry. For any parent or child there is plenty of identification, especially in Gilda's desire to please her father's wishes yet honor her own.
Because of its plethora of "tunes," this was the work that moved some to regard Verdi as a mere supplier for organ-grinders and their monkeys. But despite some hard to swallow behavioralism in Francesco Maria Piave's libretto, the opera is deft drama, and the "tunes," such as Gilda's lovely "Caro nome," the third-act quartet, and the Duke of Mantua''s rakish arias "Questa o quella" and "La donne mobile," are often ravishing. There's no letup in the work's momentum; it moves to its conclusion with an inexorable thrust.
Otto Schenk's production for the Met was fairly traditional, which in this instance was a high compliment, since paying close and sensitive attention to such things as narrative and character has generally become a forgotten virtue in the modern world of opera. Schenk has an uncanny ability to get people - and not just the stars, but supernumaries as well - to behave naturally on the stage. In this production, singing became akin to dialogue and for once the stage wasn't crowded with stiff yokels not knowing how, or where, to move. (He also staged Gilda's problematical murder by Sparafucile in appropriate confusion and darkness.)
Zack Brow's naturalistic sets were rather unusual in that they actually suggested the Italian city of Mantua of the period. They had striking perspective and plenty of sky behind and above them, and they never impeded the singer's' physical progress on the stage. The costumes were appropriately subdued in hue, not the usual "colors by Benetton" that unimaginative designers opt for.
There was nothing radical, risky, or renegade about it, and there doesn't need to be in Rigoletto. (Although when the opera first premiered in Italy in 1851 it was greeted with derision, and words such as "monstrosity," "abortion," and "filth" were bandied about in description of it.)
Matchless Performances
But what made the evening memorable were three matchless performances, propelled from the pit by Marcello Panni, making his Met debut. One of Mantua's most famous sons, Luciano Pavarotti, sang the Duke, and no one handles the role of the ne'er-do-well, charming brute nowadays with as much aplomb. The tone of his voice is a little tired and its sheen has frayed, yet Pavarotti offers a full-bodied and complex portrayal of a man who wants to honor his animal instincts and his sensitivities at the same time. Like certain large women (some of whom are singers), Pavarotti is capable of making bulk sensual. The character's movements on the stage are assured, and so are the star's, which is why the role is probably his
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