Rigoletto

When I was young my grandpa used to pick me up from school and drive me home from school until my parents got off from work. My grandpa’s car used to always smell strongly of eucalyptus, which caused me to become nauseous, and to make matters worse, during the ride home my grandpa would play this terrible music that only amplified my nausea. I vividly remember trying to stick my head out the window of the car while covering my ears in an attempt to prevent myself from throwing up.  These were my first memories of the genre they call opera. Thankfully, these events have not influenced my feelings about opera today. For all intensive purposes, my viewing of Rigoletto, last Thursday evening, was my second intense experience with the genre, one that was a much more positive and fulfilling experience than the music that I heard in my grandpa’s car.

The production of Verdi’s Rigoletto revolves around three main characters, a hunchback named Rigoletto, Rigoletto’s daughter, and the Duke. The Duke is your typical ladies man, he proclaims his love to different women every time we see him. Rigoletto is the Duke’s jester, but Rigoletto also has a secret, a daughter who he has hidden from the rest of the world. His daughter, Gilda, who is your typical naive damsel, falls in love with the Duke after they catch eyes in one day in the church. In the opening act we see the Duke courting a married woman while Rigoletto mocks her husband. Her husband, before being dragged away to prison, curses the Duke and Rigoletto. Only Rigoletto takes the curse seriously. After Rigoletto’s daughter is captured and violated by the Duke, Rigoletto seeks revenge by hiring an assassin to kill the Duke and avenge his daughter’s honor. This act of revenge, as well as the curse drives the plot for the rest of the opera. In the end it is clear that Verdi takes a cynical view when it comes down to what kind of person ultimately suffers the worse fate in life.  The plot is contrived and outdated, but that’s okay, because everything else about the opera, the most important parts, is done beautifully.

The singing was like nothing I had ever heard before. The richness of the voices, the fact that the entire opera was sung, and the beautiful melodies were beyond anything I had ever encountered. It did not matter that it was in Italian, because the emotions were so obvious that just by listening you can feel what feeling the singer is trying to convey. Even though the singer, who played Rigoletto, George Gagnidze, had a cold, there was only one word that could sum up the performances given that night, “Bravo!”

Honestly I wasn’t very surprised by the singers amazing voices, I had been expecting some of the best singing I had ever heard in my life, what I was genuinely surprised about was the elaborateness of the sets and the costumes. Every time the curtain opened there was a different set, which was interacted with throughout each Act in different ways. One minute there could be dozens of people walking around on stage, moving up and down stairs and through doors, the next minute a singer is on stage, behind him is the elaborate set, but all he does is stand in front of it and sing. These shifts from the elaborate use of sets to a more minimalist approach was shocking, something I had never seen before. What was even more impressive was that every time the curtain came up it revealed an even more elaborate and unbelievable set than the last one.  Not only were the sets great, but also the lighting was constantly changing from once scene to the next. In the third Act alone there was a sunset, a moon moving across the sky, and lightning signaling an incoming storm. This wasn’t just for looks though, the lighting and set design amplified the mood which was trying to be conveyed by the opera singers, the plot and the orchestra.

It was a pitch perfect production. At first I thought it might be boring, or too long, but I quickly learned that operas have a right to be long because they are epic. They throw everything that can be done live on stage and jam it into one production, making sure that each individual part is the highest quality on all levels.  When it fires on all cylinders, like Rigoletto did, the only outcome is an overwhelming sense of spectacle. The songs, the costumes, the music, the final curtain falling on the defeated husk of a former man, the opera is like magic.