Opera in HD: Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera production of Verdi’s masterpiece about a court jester Rigoletto
Stream from anywhere on Saturday, May 16, 2020
Rigoletto in Las-Vegas? Verdi’s extremely popular opera set to a powerful play by Victor Hugo seems to be destined for any epoch and impervious to the time and place transformations. With an ever-relevant fable and beloved arias widely familiar to opera fans and recognizable to those new to the genre, this opera is a time-tested favorite of every opera house.
Shifted to Las Vegas in the 1960s, Michael Mayer’s 2013 production of Rigoletto gets a modern look while telling the same centuries-old story of corruption, evil, and love. While the power of the old man curse put at the center of the tale seems less believable in the 20th century, the dirty intrigues and the ruthlessness of the lonely figures doing shady business look rather plausible.
For the free streaming on Saturday, May 16, 2020, Met Opera selected the production performance on February 16, 2013 with Zeljko Lucic as Rigoletto, Diana Damrau as Gilda, Piotr Beczala as Duke; Michele Mariotti conducts.
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When in 1850 Giuseppe Verdi was approached by La Fenice theater in Venice to write a new opera, he was already immensely famous and in a position to select the story of his choosing for the project. Verdi and a librettist Francesco Maria Piave who by then collaborated with Verdi on Ernani and Macbeth among several other masterpieces took interest in an intense and controversial at the time play by Victor Hugo Le roi s’amuse. Hugo’s play about venal French King Francis I and intrigues of his court was performed only once in Paris in 1832 and then banned in France for almost 50 years. The potency of the fable was too obvious, so the censors were adamant to keep it away from the public.
To pacify the censors, Piave and Verdi shifted the action from 16th century France to the long decimated by then Duchy of Mantua and even renamed the main character to Rigoletto while leaving the core of the play intact. Written by Verdi in his mid-career period along with such triumphs as Il Trovatore and La Traviata, Rigoletto is considered to be one of his top masterpieces.
Verdi’s work on the score continued until the last couple of days before the premiere. To avoid the risk of unauthorized copying of music, the singers were given the scores only a week in advance of the premiere and were prohibited to even hum the tunes in public particularly “La donna e mobile”. The opening night performance on March 11, 1851 was so successful that the next morning the arias from Rigoletto were heard on the streets of Venice.
The most recent Metropolitan Opera production of Rigoletto featured baritones Roberto Frontali and George Gagnidze in the title role, tenors Vittorio Grigolo and Bryan Hymel singing the role of Duke. Soprano Nadine Sierra, the 2018 Beverly Sills Award winner, gave a tender and genuine aura to the enamored Gilda. For the last four performances, Rosa Feola took the role of Gilda. Nicola Luicotti is conducting.
This production staged for the bicentennial anniversary of Verdi’s birth has “dynamic elements” and a colorful bunch of rowdy courtiers and casino-style cabaret-dancers in the words of the NYT. Recreated on stage with the neon lights and frivolous noise of the Rat Pack era, the glitz, the vice and the dirty dealings of the not so distant 60s make perfect parallels to the devious Duke of Mantua of renaissance time in Italy in Verdi’s libretto, or the tyrannic court of Francis I of France in Hugo’s original play. It even feels that with each passing year the twists of the storyline become ever more potent.
The estimated running time is 3 hours and 11 minutes with 2 intermissions. Stream free from anywhere on Saturday, May 16, 2020.
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Venue: 30 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023
