Rigoletto at SF Opera

A splendid revival of an old Mark Lamos production of Verdi's Rigoletto opened the San Francisco Opera season this month, and I saw the penultimate performance on Wednesday, where the cast and orchestra under Music Director Eun Sun Kim gelled for a gripping musical evening. The libretto is adapted from an 1832 play by Victor Hugo, Le roi s'amuse, which was immediately banned in France after one performance and not revived in that country until 50 years later. Verdi's closely adapted 1851 opera version ran into its own censorship problems as it also featured the real-life licentious 16th century French king, Frances I, and his hunchbacked jester Triboulet. In a compromise with the censors, Verdi and his librettist Francesco Maria Piave moved the story to Mantua, Italy, demoted the king to a Duke, and changed all the names to protect the guilty. (All production photos by Cory Weaver.)

The opera was an immediate global success with audiences but not with professional critics, including one Venetian who decried its "deformed and repulsive" story inspired by "the Satanic school." The narrative certainly is dark and brutal throughout, but is brightened by some of the most gorgeous music ever composed by Verdi. The title role of the hunchbacked jester (a disabled detail that tends to be jettisoned in modern productions) is one of the pinnacles of the baritone repertory, and Mongolian singer Amartuvshin Enkhbat has been one of its musical masters for the last two decades.

Musical appreciation for operatic voices is completely subjective, as a glance at any operatic chat room online will attest (click here for Parterre Box). For instance, some people hate the voice of Maria Callas while others worship it, and there's no right or wrong reaction. Enkhbat doesn't do enough for me in terms of characterization with his acting and his voice, but everyone whose musical opinions I respect absolutely adore him, so the problem is mine. I did love baritone Aleksey Bogdanov (pictured above behind Rigoletto) as Count Monterone, whose curse on the jester and the duke sets the tragedy in motion.

The bass Peixin Chen, another wonderful low voice, played professional assassin Sparafucile, and his scene offering his services to Rigoletto shared the same dark moodiness as the King and the Spanish Inquisitor duet in Verdi's later Don Carlo.

Rigoletto is almost completely a masculine opera, including the depraved courtiers sung superbly by the SF Opera Chorus, and it has only two female roles. The Romanian soprano Adela Zaharia played Gilda, Rigoletto's teenage daughter who has just been retrieved from the convent, and she was absolutely spectacular.

This character is often played as so innocent that she seems like a nincompoop, particularly when she sacrifices her life for the Duke in the final act, but Zaharia played her as a strong-willed young woman who has found love for the first time. Her famous Caro Nome aria, where she muses on the fake name that the Duke has given her while posing as a poor student, was the best version I have ever heard, and the orchestra supported her beautifully.

After being kidnapped by the courtiers and delivered to the duke as a new sexual treat, rather like Epstein and Trump in our own time, Zaharia convincingly conveyed Gilda's mixture of shame and romantic longing after she's been used and tossed aside.

The musical and emotional heart of the opera is in the duets between father and daughter, rather like Simon Boccanegra, and Zaharia's incredible voice was heartbreaking.

The other female character is Maddalena, sister and accomplice of the assassin Sparafucile, sung by J'Nai Bridges in an amusing, sexy performance. The Duke of Mantua is written to be charismatically handsome, and he gets most of the hit tunes, including the irresistable, sexist La donna è mobile. Though perfectly adequate, tenor Yongzhao Yu's portrayal did not come across as charmingly attractive at all, so it was hard to believe in Gilda's and Maddelena's desire to save him. It was a minor hiccup, though, and if you get a chance to make it to the final performance on Saturday the 27th, do so.