by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2013 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
The Met’s recent “Live in HD” telecast of Verdi’s Rigoletto showcased a new production by director Michael Mayer
that moved the action of the opera from 16th century Mantua to Las Vegas c.
1960 — and after the horrible atrocities of the Met’s modern-dress Traviata and Parsifal this one was actually a relief: a modern-dress opera production that
was internally consistent, made sense and actually found modern (or
recent-past) equivalents to the character and class relationships of the
original. In Mayer’s reading, the Duke of Mantua became Frank Sinatra — a
highly charismatic character, a sex addict and sufficiently Mob-connected that
even though he wasn’t a head of state he could still order, or even personally
commit, a murder (he shoots Monterone right on stage with a small handgun!) without
having to worry about legal consequences. Rigoletto became Don Rickles, a
comedian whose stage act was vicious meanness (his tag line was “Hello,
dummy!”) but was nice, kind and generous as could be off-stage. The various
courtiers became the Rat Pack, with Borsa (Alexander Lewis) played as a
combination of Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis, Jr.; Marullo (Jeff Mattsey) as
Dean Martin; Countess Ceprano (Emalie Savoy), the only woman the Duke goes
after in the story who eludes his grasp, as Marilyn Monroe; and her husband
Count Ceprano (David Crawford) as Mafioso Sam Giancana, who reportedly shared
his mistress Judith Campbell with both Sinatra and President John F. Kennedy.
The between-acts interviews with the singers in these roles said they’d
actually found it helpful when Mayer gave them real-life people on whom to
model their characterizations, and as forced as some of the parallels got they
did add depth and made the courtiers seem more like individual people and less
like a generic opera chorus. Rigoletto (Zelijko Lucic) is still referred to as
a hunchback but his only concession to “hunchicity” was to lean slightly
forward as he walked, and the only reference in his costume to the usual image
of a court jester was a vest that looked somewhat like a red-suit playing card.
The opera purists would probably be outraged, but the spare costuming at least
helped Lucic retain his dignity on stage; all too many baritones who play
Rigoletto come scritto slouch around like Marty Feldman in Young
Frankenstein. In addition to the visual
updating of the opera, the subtitles on the broadcast were deliberately written
in c. 1960 American English slang (and some of it actually seemed more recent
than that; one of the lines in the Duke’s “Questa o quella” came out “Monogamy
is monotony,” which predictably elicited a groan from Charles!), and in the
last act Sparafucile dumps the bag containing Gilda’s body into the trunk of a
blue Cadillac whose license plate reads “SPARFUC” — obviously a personalized
license plate (an anachronism given that such things didn’t exist in the U.S.
in 1960) for Sparafucile but also making the wicked pun, “Spare fuck,” a
reference to the role played by Sparafucile’s sister Maddalena in the story.
For those who aren’t familiar with the basic plot of Rigoletto as Verdi and his librettist, Francisco Maria Piave,
adapted it from Victor Hugo’s Le Roi s’Amuse (“The King Amuses Himself”), here goes: 16th century
Mantua is ruled by a licentious Duke (Piotr Beczala, a Polish tenor whose name
I had always presumed was pronounced as it was spelled until Renée Fleming,
introducing him, said something that sounded like “Bech-WAH-nuh”) whose
principal avocation is getting himself into the pants (or whatever they wore
back then) of any woman who’ll hold still long enough for him to get his rocks
off. He introduces this side of himself in his opening aria, “Questa o quella”
— meaning “This one or that one,” expressing the sentiment that women are
completely interchangeable and he doesn’t care who he has sex with as long as
it’s alive, human and female. He’s recruited equally morally despicable people
as courtiers to help him recruit his victims, and he’s also hired a court
jester named Rigoletto whose basic function seems to be to ridicule the
husbands, boyfriends, parents, relatives or significant others of the Duke’s
seducees. Rigoletto is a single father who is neurotically overprotective of
his daughter Gilda (Diana Damrau), who since her mother died (giving birth to
her? The libretto isn’t clear on that point but it’s entirely possible; in the
19th century women’s deaths in childbirth were all too common) has become
Rigoletto’s only interest outside his job. He keeps her shut up in his little
house, letting her out only to go to church and only in the company of her
governess/nurse/chaperone Giovanna (Maria Zifchak), with the idea that by
locking her in he can keep her from attracting the attention of the Duke or
someone equally corrupt in his court. Alas, she’s already fallen for the Duke —
she met him at church and has no idea who he is — and he’s taken enough with
her to find out where she lives. (In this production there’s a neat little
scene of the Duke slipping Giovanna some cash as a bribe to betray Gilda; I
don’t remember Piave’s libretto being that obvious about it but it’s a neat
gesture and ties in with the greed and lust that motivate the Duke and his
entourage.)
Once the Duke finds out where Gilda lives he pays court to her,
pretending to be a poor student named “Gualtier Maldé,” and after they sing their
duet he leaves and she moons over him in her big aria, “Caro nome” (“Dearest
Name”), now that she finally has a name (albeit a false one) to go with the
face and bod she’s been fantasizing about. Meanwhile Rigoletto has been
approached by Sparafucile (Stefan Kocán), a hit man who runs an inn on the
outskirts of town and uses his sexually open sister Maddalena (Oksana Volkova)
to lure his victims to the inn, where he kills them. Rigoletto tells
Sparafucile he has no need for his services … yet, and after Sparafucile leaves Rigoletto sings a
marvelously broken aria, “Pari siamo” (which basically means “We are the same”
— Rigoletto reflects that Sparafucile kills people with a knife and Rigoletto
himself destroys them with his wit). Monterone (Robert Pomakov) — who in this
production is made an Arab sheik, a visiting high-roller pissed off at the Duke
for seducing his daughter — pronounces a curse on the Duke and all the people
in his court, but they laugh it off — all but Rigoletto, who’s sensitive and
decent enough to be upset that he was cursed out by the grieving father of one
of the Duke’s victims. (Indeed, Verdi was so taken with this plot element that
his working title for Rigoletto
was La Maledizione — “The
Curse.”) The first act ends with the courtiers telling Rigoletto they’re going
to kidnap Countess Ceprano (Emalie Savoy) and take her to the court so the Duke
can amuse himself with her, only they’re really going to Rigoletto’s own house
and want to trick Rigoletto himself into helping them kidnap Gilda, whom they
think is Rigoletto’s mistress instead of his daughter. They blindfold Rigoletto
and put plugs in his ears so he can neither see the woman he’s helping them
abduct nor hear her voice (though a lot of modern productions, including this
one, omit the earplugs and therefore leave us wondering how Rigoletto can be
fooled when he would recognize Gilda’s voice the moment she cried for help).
At
the start of act two, the Duke returns to Rigoletto’s house, expecting to meet
Gilda for a hot afternoon, only he finds she’s gone and in the one decent thing
he does in the whole opera, he sings “Parmi veder le lagrime,” noticing that
she cried when they met and wondering if he could forsake all other women for
her. Not that that lasts very long; he finds Gilda in his own court, where the
kidnappers have brought her (concealed in a giant Egyptian sarcophagus, one of
those transparently fake props Las Vegas hotels of the period constructed to
establish some attempt at an atmosphere from antiquity), only Rigoletto finds
her too, sends the courtiers away and in one of the high points of the score
they sing the duet “Tutte le feste” in which Gilda explains how she met the
Duke (and how he tricked her) and Rigoletto alternately comforts her and vows
revenge. His idea of revenge is to hire Sparafucile to kill the Duke, and
accordingly Sparafucile lures the Duke to the inn with Maddalena as his bait —
while Rigoletto brings Gilda to the inn to eavesdrop on the Duke with Maddalena
so he can convince her the Duke is a faithless, wanton seducer unworthy of her
affections — and the scene culminates in the famous quartet, “Bella figlia
dell’ amore,” in which the Duke woos Maddalena with his usual seduction lines
while Rigoletto tries to tell Gilda what sort of man he really is and Gilda
basically pouts in stunned disbelief. Only Maddalena decides the Duke is so hot
she doesn’t want her brother to kill him; she suggests he kill Rigoletto
instead but it’s not in Sparafucile’s moral code to kill a customer.
Accordingly Sparafucile agrees to murder the first person who comes out of the
inn, whether it’s the Duke or someone else — and Gilda, who’s in male drag as
part of Rigoletto’s plan for them to flee after the murder goes down, overhears
this and decides to sacrifice her own life to save the Duke’s. Rigoletto
accepts delivery of the bag containing Gilda’s body, and he’s convinced his
plan has succeeded — until he hears the chilling reprise of “La donna è
mobile,” the score’s most famous aria, a marvelous bit of projection in which
the Duke projects his own moral failings on the other gender (the opening line
is usually translated as “Women are fickle, false altogether”). Hearing the
Duke’s song makes him realize that the Duke has somehow survived the plot, and
naturally curious as to just who’s in the body bag, Rigoletto opens it, sees
his own daughter, and is horrified and overcome. She sings a marvelous final
scene, “Lassù in cielo,” in which she looks forward to meeting her mother in
heaven and praying for her father’s soul so that when he croaks he’ll be
allowed to meet them there, and after Gilda finally expires Rigoletto looks
skyward, recalls Monterone’s curse, and screams, “Ah, la maledizione!” Curtain.
Rigoletto is generally considered the beginning of Verdi’s middle or mature
period, and it’s a far-reaching opera nothing like anything an Italian composer
had ever written before. The Duke’s big arias are the score’s pop tunes, but
the music for the other principals — especially Rigoletto himself — is nothing
like the simple slow-fast cavatina-cabaletta formula previous Italian composers
(including Verdi himself in his earlier works) had used. “Pari siamo” is a bit
of jagged pieces of music, fitted together not to a musical formula but to
express the torment gripping Rigoletto’s soul, his sense that by being the
house comic at the Duke’s morally corrupt court he’s no better than a hired
assassin. When Rigoletto discovers his daughter has been kidnapped, Verdi sets
his rage not to a bouncy uptempo tune but to “Cortigiani, vil razza dannata,” a
menacing, raging piece of music that expresses Rigoletto’s revulsion at the
people he’s served and what he’s done for them, and also his anger that despite
his incredible efforts to protect his daughter, she’s been swept up in his
employer’s corrupt world anyway. (One thing this production blessedly didn’t do is give Rigoletto an incestuous itch for Gilda;
it’s probably only a matter of time, though, before a modern director decides
that the only thing that could possibly explain Rigoletto’s neurotic
overprotectiveness of Gilda is if he had the hots for her himself.) What’s
amazing about Michael Mayer’s production is that it works; the amoral
atmosphere of Las Vegas c. 1960 is a close enough parallel to the setting Verdi
and Piave had in mind (especially once they had to downgrade the tenor villain
from a king to a duke at the insistence of the Italian censors, who behaved
towards Verdi and the other composers of his time pretty much the way the staff
of the Hays Office in Hollywood did in enforcing the Motion Picture Production
Code in the 1930’s, 1940’s and 1950’s) and the glittering neon of Act I is a
powerful visual symbol for the real “city that never slept,” a place in which
celebrities like Sinatra and his fellow Rat Packers could party to their
heart’s content, indulge themselves in booze, women and drugs (though Sinatra
was always anti-drug, to the point of staging an intervention with Sammy Davis,
Jr. after Davis had got hooked on cocaine — a point blissfully ignored by
Mayer, who has the Sinatra-esque Duke sniff coke in one scene; later he has the
Duke swig from a bottle of amber fluid, a reference to Sinatra’s real drug of
choice, Jack Daniels’ whiskey — the real Sinatra left instructions that he be
buried with a bottle of it!) and be protected from any collateral damage they
did, safe in the assurance from their Mafia buddies that whatever happened in
Vegas, up to and including murder, really would stay in Vegas.
By chance I’d heard this performance of Rigoletto before I watched it, and in its audio-only
incarnation, without Mayer’s exciting visuals, it was basically just another
recording of Rigoletto — and I had not been particularly impressed by the
principals except for Diana Damrau as Gilda (not surprisingly, the only cast
member I’d heard of before). With the visuals, Damrau slipped a bit in my
estimation — she still sang divinely but she’s well past her teenage years
(Gilda is supposed to be a love-struck teenager) and she tried to bridge the
gap between the character’s age and her own by acting like an annoying
flibbertigibbet instead of, as John Ardoin described Maria Callas’s Gilda, “an
innocent of whom circumstance makes a woman.” On the other hand, the rest of
the principals seemed to gain when we could see as well as hear them; Zelijko
Lucic portrayed a desperate dignity in the scenes with his daughter and a
fearsome rage in the later stages, and though Piotr Beczala hardly had the
charisma of the real Frank Sinatra (but then, who would?), he looks convincing
as a lounge-lizard entertainer (there’s a neat touch in which a mike is thrust
in his hand just before he starts “Questa o quella,” essentially portraying it
as the sort of number the Duke sings in his Vegas act) and he’s got a strong
voice well suited to the Duke’s music. He’s also hot-looking, though not so hot
that we can readily believe he owes his life at the end to the actions of two
women (ironic for such a misogynist character!) who both find him so
irresistible that they won’t let him be killed, and one of them even gives her
own life to save his — and I must say I found the Sparafucile, Stefan Kocán, to
be the hottest guy in the cast (though maybe that was just how he was costumed:
a purple suit and green tie in act one, a green leather jacket in act three).
Damrau doesn’t quite achieve the remarkable feat Callas pulled off in “Lassù in
cielo,” convincing us that she was half in this world and half in the next one,
but she nonetheless phrases her part in the final duet quite sensitively and
ravishingly (probably not a good word in this context!). She goes out with a
quiet dignity and strength that ably caps a performance that triumphs vocally
and overcomes her rather silly gestures and deportment on stage. And the
production, it seemed to me, quite nicely reflected the growing darkness of the
story, from the neon-lit party scenes in Act I to the aftermath of Act II (with
the courtiers passed out in drunken stupors on a series of couches) and Act
III, set in a strip club (Maddalena begins it by doing a pole dance) in which
the tube lights are mostly blue except for flashes of white that animate across
the stage to represent the storm that’s going on and mirrors the boiling human
emotions of the story.
Michael Mayer’s “Vegas Rigoletto” seems to me to be an almost complete success, a
shining example of how a standard-repertory opera can be updated without losing
its essence — and one weird aspect of the opera scene today is how many
productions there are that change the setting and major aspects of the story in
pathetic attempts to make the piece more “relevant,” and how few of them pull
it off. When Peter Sellars did his three stagings of the Mozart-da Ponte operas
in the 1980’s, I loved The Marriage of Figaro because Sellars, like Mayer, found modern-day
equivalents for the original characters and their class relationships, but
hated the Don Giovanni and Cosi
fan Tutte because there Sellars didn’t seem
to be bothering — he was doing them in modern drag just to be different. I also
quite enjoyed the 1983 Frank Corsaro production of Bizet’s Carmen, which not only moved the opera’s setting to the
1930’s — the time of the Spanish Civil War — but incorporated the war into the
plot: Carmen and her smuggler friends were running guns to the Loyalists, while
José was in Franco’s army. (The more recent Met Carmen also updated the story to the era of the Civil War
but did absolutely nothing
creative with the revised setting — and the reviewers who praised it seemed
oblivious to the existence of Corsaro’s production almost three decades
earlier.) But most modern-dress productions have just seemed boring or silly,
and the self-consciously “avant-garde” productions at the Met like the Willy
Decker Traviata or the François
Girard Parsifal have been
downright offensive in their sheer perversity and disinclination to serve the
original intent of the composer and librettist. I’m reserving judgment on the
current Robert Lepage Ring at the
Met until I see more of it — so far I’ve only seen the Walküre, which I thought worked even though some parts
seemed risible (notably the appearance of the Valkyries on see-saws during the
famous Ride at the start of Act III); at least Lepage was attempting with his
up-and-down steel planks to reproduce the seismic activity that roils Iceland,
part of the world that generated the Norse sagas Wagner adapted into his
scenario for the Ring.
I’ve read
enough on both sides of the debate over so-called Regietheater — productions in which, depending on your point of
view, the stage director/designer either alters or updates the setting and
story of an opera or a classic play to allow its message to come through more
strongly to a modern audience, or arrogantly substitutes his (or, much more
rarely, her) own vision for that of the creators of the original work — and generally
I’d much rather watch either a tastefully done traditional production or a
coherently stylized one like Wieland Wagner’s famous 1950’s restagings of his
grandfather’s works at Bayreuth; but if all modern-dress opera productions were
at the level of this Michael Mayer Rigoletto — coherent, sensible, aimed at translating the
characters and their class and social relationships into modern equivalent
instead of just moving them willy-nilly through the centuries to be “different”
or to be outrageous — I’d like them a lot better!
