Rigoletto (an opera review post)

You want to talk tragedy? Let's talk tragedy.

My wife and I wrapped up our 2016-17 opera season with Rigoletto, a Giuseppe Verdi opera based on a play by Victor Hugo. Neither play nor opera were received well by "those in charge," so to speak. Hugo's play, Le Roi s'amuse, was banned after one performance and not performed again for 50 years. Rigoletto also fell prey to the censors, but Verdi worked closely with the censors to make changes to the opera, like removing the action of the plot to Mantua instead of France, so that it could be performed. Let's just say that the nobility didn't appreciate either work.

At this point, I'm really tempted to give you a rundown of the plot, but you can get that elsewhere, or read Hugo's play, which the opera is very faithful to (despite the changes Verdi made to satisfy the censors). If there was ever a tragic figure in literature, Rigaletto (Triboulet in the play) is certainly it, a man reduced to life as a court jester due to a physical deformity. Triboulet is an actual historical figure, just so you know, not that I know how accurately Hugo portrays him in his play. The play is fiction, after all.

The premise, though, is that nobility, due to their high station, are able to escape the consequences of their horrible behavior in ways that other people are not able to. The idea is comparable to Don Giovanni in that it actually takes a supernatural occurrence to hold Giovanni accountable for the horrible things he has done. There is nothing similar in Rigoletto to hold the duke of Mantua accountable for his abuses. Rigoletto is left to pay all the consequences, not that some of them are not of his own design, and therein lies the tragedy.

For this production, Rigoletto was played by Quinn Kelsey, and he was AMAZING! Not only does he have an amazing voice, but he brought a certain amount of sympathy to the character so that you actually feel bad for him in the end. Because, don't get me wrong, Rigoletto is not a nice guy and really (almost) deserves everything he gets. He would if it was not taken out on Gilda, his innocent daughter, who also suffers at the hand of the duke.

Nino Machaidze (Gilda) and Pene Pati (the duke) are also great. Their only detriment being that they had to perform opposite Kelsey. Actually, this production was full of great performers. And one who rose even above that. Kelsey is already being compared to Pavarotti, and Pavarotti is generally considered the greatest tenor ever to sing opera. I guess we'll see how things go with Kelsey.

The sets and costumes were also impressive, and I would say that this was a pretty great production of Rigoletto, not that I've seen other productions of Rigoletto, but this one was great, and I would gladly go back to see it again.

Fun fact:
The duke's aria, "La donna e mobile," is one of the most recognizable tunes in opera. Verdi knew what he had when he wrote it, too, and didn't introduce it to the cast and musicians of Rigoletto until hours before the premiere performance of the opera. They were given instructions to not sing, whistle, or even think the melody outside of the theater. The morning after the premier performance, people were singing the aria in the streets.

Don Giovanni (an opera review post)

At long last, we're finishing up the 2016 opera season at the San Francisco Opera! We have three this month (June, as I write this), the first of which is Don Giovanni by Mozart.

Don Giovanni is rather appropriately timed considering our political climate. Not that Don Giovanni is at all political, because it's not. However, it is about a man, Don Giovanni, who has no control over his impulses and has no problem with the idea of grabbing a woman by the pussy. Or a girl, for that matter. He's a noble, a star, and expects to get to do whatever he wants, which is mostly how it goes for him.

Until he kills someone.

Look, Giovanni is so smooth (and rich, because you can't leave out the influence of money) that he walks into the wedding of a young couple and walks out with the bride after sending the groom on his way.

You should also keep in mind that this opera premiered in 1787. More than 200 years later, it's one of the top 10 most performed operas worldwide. It is, after all, Mozart.

Being Mozart, the music is very solid, but none of it really grabbed me. It's the kind of stuff that would, say, make great background music, but there's none of it that I wanted to sing along with. So to speak. Because I'm not likely to ever be singing along with opera. That's just a bit beyond me.

My experience so far with Mozart (this is my third Mozart opera) tells me that he's very good at "sidekick" characters, and this was no exception. The character of Leporello provides the comic relief, and Erwin Schrott gave an amazing performance. He was easily my favorite even though Ildebrando D'Arcangelo, as Don Giovanni, was also great.

Generally speaking, all of the performers were great... with the exception of Stanislas de Barbeyrac as Don Ottavio. de Barbeyrac had that problem of standing in place when he was singing and not emoting at all. Even when other people were singing. He tended to do nothing more than stand around on stage when he was on stage. It was kind of weird considering that all of the other performers were also acting their parts but this one guy just stood there looking bored all the time.

The set was also kind of... well, I don't know. It was almost cool but, then, it fell short. They had these large mirror/screen things on the stage that they did some interesting things with, but one of the things was projecting images of people onto them. So, like, when Don Ottavio is singing of his love for Donna Anna, there are images of her in the "mirrors" as he sang. But that's really the only scene where they effectively used those. At other times, a face might pop up and would be gone within moments; considering that there were at least half a dozen of the "mirrors" on the stage most of the time, it always made me wonder if I missed something because I was looking at some other part of the stage. Overall, I think they were underutilized and a distraction rather than adding anything to the production. Wasted potential.

So let's get a bit spoilery.

Don Giovanni is completely unrepentant about his lifestyle. He uses and damages people and considers it his right to do so. He never apologizes. [Does that sound like any orange gremlin you might know?] At the end of the opera, Giovanni is visited by the man he murdered. Giovanni somewhat inadvertently invited the dead man to dinner, and the dead man accepted the invitation. Not that Giovanni expected him to actually show up despite the supernatural occurrence in the graveyard. But the dead man does show up and explains to Giovanni that there are bad things coming for him unless he repents. Giovanni, being true to his nature, refuses... and gets dragged into Hell because of it.

Now, seriously, who does that remind you of? This philosophy of not apologizing but always hitting back harder only goes so far, and I think some prominent people in our government (>cough<Trump>cough<) are about to find that out.