Rigoletto Review

A trip to The Met is a return to familiarity for me. Some families go to every other Yankee game, some have a weekly movie night, my mother took me to dozens upon dozens of operas, and ballets. As a child I slept through the second half of Carmen, Hansel und Gretel, Madama Butterfly, Otello, Falstaff, Tosca, Manon, Faust, Il Trovatore, Romeo et Juliet, and others. In truth I used to dread trips to the velvet-walled palace. As a five year old its royal appeal was only so distracting, and as a ten year old the intermissions were never long enough. Eventually I came to not merely tolerate the performances but appreciate the music, tradition and glamour that together are opera.

I appreciated Thursday night’s production of Rigoletto. The singers fused actions and melody at a proper ratio that made the story easy to follow, and the emotions fueling the story easy to sense. The story of Rigoletto is a classic perverted love tale, complete with naïve daughter, untrustworthy lover and concerned, vengeful father. The various performers told each individual branch of the story appropriately, even well, but nothing about the show was astounding, which is what opera must be in order to be considered great. Granted, each aria was in tune, and every set change was impeccable but there was no “wow” factor that might have otherwise differentiated the production from past ones.

One specific element I particularly enjoyed was the weaving in of threads of humor throughout the performance. As a kid I never would’ve picked up the small but sharp sarcastic commentaries and sexist or sexual quips, but now I do. This additional layer of the script provided me a bit of newfound respect for the libretto of Rigoletto, which is likely the birthplace of any humor in the show. An opera must have a story, and although the story will likely be archetypal, it helps to have minor twists (like an assassin) thrown into the mix to upgrade the tale from one that’s been told to one we haven’t really heard before.

Finally Rigoletto served as a reminder of how beautiful other languages can be. I loved Margaret Garner, because its English script allowed me to focus more intently upon the performers and the staging but there remains something classic and beautiful about an Italian opera that automatically lays out a strong foundation for any production to build off of. An alluring language is that much more likely to yield an appealing performance.