United Kingdom Verdi, Rigoletto: Soloists, Refrain and Orchestra of Welsh Nationwide Opera / Pietro Rizzo (conductor). Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, 21.9.2024. (GPu)
Thank goodness that the deliberate strike which might have prevented this efficiency was suspended only a few days earlier than the premiere. What we noticed and heard was an totally convincing argument for the need of the continuation of Welsh Nationwide Opera’s work, not solely inside Wales but in addition in England. We heard some particularly fantastic singing (most notably from Soraya Mafi as Gilda and Daniel Luis de Vicente as Rigoletto), singing which, always articulated the respective emotional lives of Gilda and Rigoletto.
Verdi by no means composed his projected model of King Lear, however he got here near doing so in Rigoletto, with the Idiot because the tragic hero. Shakespeare’s Lear can not distinguish between the actual love that Cordelia has for him and the form of calculating ‘love’ which Goneril and Regan fake to have for him. The Duke in Verdi’s opera is unable to discern how completely different his sexual pleasure along with his courtroom women is from something one may fairly name love. Rigoletto can initially solely categorical his love for his daughter very crudely, by preserving her imprisoned in his home. That Gilda ought to finish the opera lifeless in her father’s arms is as inevitable as Cordelia’s look in her father’s arms within the final scene of Shakespeare’s play.
Though Victor Hugo’s Le roi s’amuse was the direct supply of the libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and the composer, it was certainly additionally influenced by Verdi’s nice, however pissed off enthusiasm for Shakespeare. Verdi’s use of Hugo’s play was often expressed in methods which evoked Shakespeare’s King Lear, in order that, for instance, he admired Hugo’s character Triboulet, the jester in Le roi s’amuse, as ‘a creation worthy of Shakespeare’. The Idiot in King Lear is in some ways completely different from Rigoletto, however Triboulet/Rigoletto acquired, for Verdi a associated energy over his thoughts; writing of the reactions of the Venetian censors he declares to Piave: ‘I observe lastly that we’re to keep away from making Triboulet ugly and hunchbacked … Placing on the stage a personality who’s grossly deformed and absurd however so inwardly passionate and full of affection is exactly what I really feel to be so fantastic. I selected this topic exactly for these qualities, these authentic traits, and if they’re taken away I can now not write music for it. If you happen to inform me that my music can keep the identical even with this drama I reply that I don’t perceive this type of reasoning, and I have to say frankly that whether or not my music is nice or unhealthy I don’t write it at random, however at all times attempt to give it a particular character’ (Carteggi Verdiani, ed. A.Luzio, Rome 1935-1947, pp.109-111, translated thus in Julian Budden, Verdi, 1985, New York, 1987, p.57).
The minor figures within the solid have been largely diminished to misguided (self-deceived) representatives of a lovelessly promiscuous courtroom, their lack of self-knowledge evident in a refrain from early within the first act:
‘Tutto è gioia, tutto è festa!
Tutto invitaci a goder!
Oh, guardate, non pa questa
Or la reggia del piacer?’
‘What gaiety! What celebration spirit
What splendid leisure!
Oh, simply look, would you not say
That this was the realm of delight?’
This ‘jolly’ tutti invitations the viewers to evaluate what is going on on the stage – a writhing mass of courtiers and girls of the courtroom, with sexual acts being carried out right here and there amidst the frilly knickers (from designer Annemarie Woods) and naked flesh. Most would, I assume, decide it to be, not the Arcadian-sounding ‘realm of delight’, however a state of rampant debauchery. It’s at this level that Monterone (Paul Carey Jones) enters and delivers his curse, a curse which troubles Rigoletto significantly (although not the Duke) and which resonates all through a lot of what follows and is essential to Verdi’s success in fusing the comedian and the horrible, which he noticed, in a letter to Salvatore Cammarano (in 1848) as attribute of ‘Shakespeare’s method’.
Given the blindness as to the character of affection which permeates King Lear and the style during which love is distorted in Rigoletto, what occurs in Verdi’s opera is inevitable – the destruction of those that are genuinely able to love.
The Duke of Mantua was pleasantly sung by Raffaele Abete – a late substitute for Leonardo Capalbo – who maybe hadn’t absolutely come to phrases with the manufacturing, since his voice appeared underpowered and missing in energy of characterisation. On the night time, he was significantly overshadowed by Daniel Luis de Vicente’s Rigoletto and the Gilda of Soraya Mafi.
The Spanish-American baritone, Luis de Vicente has sung quite a lot of main Verdi roles – equivalent to Rigoletto (in Palermo and Prague), Simon Boccanegra (in Essen) and Nabucco (Slovak Nationwide Opera); this wide-experience of Verdi’s calls for on his singers was evident in all facets of his efficiency right here. The load of his voice was deeply spectacular within the later phases of the opera, when he approaches the tragic realisation of what he has achieved. The interplay with the Gilda of Soraya Mafi was profoundly transferring within the closing scenes, during which Mafi’s voice metamorphosed from the girlish glow and brilliance of ‘Caro nome’ because it was deepened by an understanding of how her father cherished her. Luis de Vicente and Mafi have been the celebrities of this manufacturing, as their reception by the first-night viewers recognised.
Amongst the lesser roles Nathanaël Tavernier’s Sparafucile exerted a quiet menace and Alyona Abramova, as his daughter Maddalena (the resonance of the title is important) made a robust impression within the restricted alternatives the opera provides her. The stage idiom of this manufacturing made it appear pure that the allegorical language of the morality play needs to be a significant a part of the way it defines itself in Act III, as when, referring to the Duke, Rigoletto declares ‘Egli è Delitto, Punizion son io’ (He’s Crime, I’m Punishment).
Lastly, I have to commend the excellence of the WNO’s refrain and orchestra underneath conductor Pietro Rizzo. This was the corporate’s first efficiency of a manufacturing directed by Adele Thomas. Its boldness encourages the assumption that her appointment as WNO’s Common Director and CEO will certainly be – satisfactory funding however – a completely good factor.
Glyn Pursglove
Solid:
Duke – Raffaele Abete
Rigoletto – Daniel Luis de Vicente
Gilda – Soraya Mafi
Monterone – Paul Carey Jones
Sparafucile – Nathanaël Tavernier
Maddalena – Alyona Abramova
Borsa – Zwakele Tshabalala
Marulla – Alastair Moore
Rely Ceprano – Martin Lloyd
Giovanna – Sian Meinir
Web page – Francesca Saracino
Usher – Julian Boyce
Manufacturing:
Director – Adele Thomas
Designer – Annemarie Woods
Lighting designer – Man Hoare
Choreographer – Emma Woods
Battle director – Kate Waters
Refrain grasp – Frederick Brown
