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In 1851, Rigoletto was a challenge in all sorts of ways.
For a start, it was based on Victor Hugo’s 1832 play Le roi s’amuse, a
drama of 16th century royal debauchery which the 19th century authorities had promptly
banned after its disastrous opening night. When Verdi and librettist Francesco Maria Piave
turned their attentions to the story a mere eighteen years later, there had been no
cooling of the emotions. By shifting the setting to an obscure Duchy and altering some of
the details, Verdi and Piave managed to evade the censors’ wrath, if not their
disgust: "His excellency the Military Governor Gorzkowski deplores the fact that the
poet Piave and the great maestro Verdi have not been able to find any scope for their
talents other than the disgusting immorality and obscene triviality of the plot titled La
Maledizione [or, The Curse, which was the Opera’s working title at that
time]."
The story concerns events which transpire in the court of the Duke of
Mantova, a cheerfully lecherous character who seems equally at ease romancing beautiful
girls as simply having them brought to his court to be raped at his leisure. His court
Jester, a hunchback named Rigoletto, is happy to cheer him on, and to leer as courtier
Monterone’s own daughter becomes the Duke’s latest conquest. Before being
dragged away to death row for his inevitable defiance, Monterone damns the Duke with a
father’s curse. By various turns of fate, some contrived, some tragically inevitable,
it is Rigoletto who finally stands over the body of his own beautiful daughter as the Duke
sings the opera’s signature aria "la donna e mobile" off stage.
The lurid details of the plot were challenging enough for nineteenth
century audiences, not to mention the political overtones and the explicit critique of
libertine attitudes, but Rigoletto also represented a change in Verdi’s
style. He had already found an audience for Nabucco (1842) and Macbeth
(1847), but the comparatively straightforward structure and musical rhythms used in these
and his other early works changed with Rigoletto. The plot was tight as a drum by
comparison with most other operas, leaving little room for irrelevancy. There was no
overture, there were no pauses for characters to sing their hearts out just so the
audience could get to know them, no obvious climaxes (until the actual climax) or major
set pieces--no space for self-indulgent ornamentation.
Linking each aria, duet, and chorus to significant plot and character
developments, drawing the audience into the world as cannily and deliberately as a
playwright, Verdi was reshaping how opera could be written.
Opera Ireland’s current production is directed with muscular force
by Paris-born Olivier Tambosi. Bold set designs by Frank Philipp Schlössmann cut a clean
line through the text, casting the court of the Duke in strong blues and reds through
which all but one of the female characters drift on clouds of white costume designed by
Elisabeth Gressel. The production begins with Verdi’s brief prelude, during which
Belgian baritone Marcel Vanaud first appears as Rigoletto. He is not a hunchback, but an
ordinary man in an ill-fitting suit, which he removes to don the costume of the Jester,
his weariness and vulnerability emphasized as he stands there in his underwear, portly
belly hanging over workaday boxer shorts. The curtains then twitch aside to reveal the
chambers of the Duke, with courtiers dressed in red robes and powdered wigs. The floor is
strewn with the discarded white skirts of anonymous conquests while the Duke (Romanian
tenor Robert Nagy) ravishes Monterone’s daughter.
Though not as debauched or nearly radical as some productions have been
(not in Ireland, mind you), there is enough meat to Tambosi’s direction to give the
audience pause. There are some lovely design conceits that constantly draw attention to
the dark heart of the story: a massive cut-out in the shape of the Duke frames the exit
stage left; Gilda drapes herself in the (red) full length stage curtains which have
hitherto blocked the space during her "dishonor," the whim of the Duke; the
chorus lie as dead bodies half-hidden in refuse sacks at the front of the stage during Act
III (set in an inn run by an assassin).
Vanaud has plenty of presence as Rigoletto, though the lack of true
physical grotesquerie (no hump) does quell the fire of his tragedy just a little. Italian
bass Carlo Signi does make a distinctive and surreal physical impression as the assassin
Sparafucile. Balded, blanched and clad entirely in black as he slowly pads across the
stage, his singing seemingly comes from the pits of hell. Paired up with Italian
mezzo-soprano Monica Minarelli as Sparafucile’s (equally balded, equally blanched)
sister Magdalena, he provides the final act with sobriety and terror in equal measure.
Nagy makes a convincingly rakish Duke, all bad boy smiles and willful
ennui even as he sings of his "true love" for Gilda (Turkish soprano Yelda
Kodalli) in Act I. Though the performances on the whole are good and the particularly
tricky task of keeping Verdi’s emphasis on equality and balance has been
accomplished, the loveliest voice on stage belongs to Kodalli. She delivers a clear and
delicate characterization of Gilda’s complex and paradoxical emotions, shifting from
the quietest of registers to the most ear-piercing without ever becoming bombastic. There
is real depth to this voice, one which was a risk for Verdi, who usually did not entrust
key roles to light sopranos. Kodalli’s performance here shows the nuance to which the
composer was aspiring, and it is often breathtaking.
Dublin, November 21, 2004 - Harvey O'Brien
