I went to this over a week ago and it is much remiss of me not to have reviewed it.
Very very enjoyable. A good solid cast in an interesting production. As I have said before, you wouldn't applaud the scenery at Holland Park, and the chorus blocking strikes me in general as being a little bit amdrams.
But I stress again that this is carping at the edges, rather than a basis for a critiqueing. Royal Opera House it isn't, but then, nor is anything else.
Good orchestra. Got the tunes over in an exemplary fashion.
Cast mainly in modern dress. Some of the Ladies gowns were lovely, and were worn properly, with, on the whole, no underwear visible. Except for Maddalena. But her display of underwear under a fur coat was merely proof to my point that it's loose women who display their underwear. Rigoletto did put his jester's costume over his jeans and t-shirt where necessary.
Rigoletto is an opera I would heartily recommend to a newbie wondering what to risk seeing as their first opera outing. Packed from start to finish with bloody good tunes. Just as you think one is finishing, another one starts up. There's barely any bit in that loses my concentration. I sort of think that the initial encounter between Rigoletto and Sparafucile is a bit drawn out, but I suppose it's necessary for the dramaturgy. Even so, it's worth listening to the cello in there. Some of the bloody good tunes are the show-stopping arias - Care nome and La donna e mobile being the most obvious - and the amazingly wonderful quartet, Bella figlia dell'amore, but throughout there are less obvious and less famous numbers that are just exquisitely gorgeous to listen to.
Although the set was sparse and regardless of it being in modern costume I thought that it was a gripping and intelligent presentation of the story.
The tale focuses on Rigoletto, the hunchbacked court jester to the Duke of Mantua; his official jocular persona is sharply contrasted with his tragic and obsessive protection of his daughter Gilda. When Gilda falls victim to the Duke's seduction, the hunchback decides to have his revenge, but Gilda's selflessness leaves her father with the wrong corpse on his hands. Brimming with popular arias such as 'La donna è mobile' and 'Questa o quella', Rigoletto is sure to provide one of the highlights of the 2006 Opera Holland Park season.
The main cast members were:
Rigoletto Olafur Sigurdarson
Gilda Gail Pearson
Duke of Mantua Paul O'Neill
Sparafucile Paul Reeves
Maddalena Heather Shipp
although Heather Shipp had a cold so mimed on stage whilst Rebecca du Pont Davies sang the role from the pit.
Not a weak link among them. I was most impressed by Olafur Sigurdarson whose voice had a good stage presence and he acted the role with conviction. Gail Pearson has a lovely voice. It was probably a good thing that the role was conceived by the director as being like a clockwork doll, because when she subsequently damaged her ankle her limping fitted into the conception! I thought that Paul O'Neill was at least as good as the Duke I saw at ENO, although not on a par with those I have seen on DVD or at ROH. But he's young.
It was interesting that characterisation of Gilda as a mechanical doll, because I'm listening on CD (Giulini 1979, of course) as I write this and suddenly, I can hear it in the music. Who says a modern production is designed despite the composer? When the modern production shows what the composer wrote it enhances our listening? And Gilda was a doll, kept a virtual prisoner by her father, unable to make proper judgements about people because of her lack of contact with people.
There was furniture abuse - The Duke threw one chair at another and a leg came off; later Rigoletto systematically threw all of a dozen or more chairs that were assembled on stage. There was very little action at floor level, except for dying Gilda in a sack. Indeed, that would be my other criticism of OHP - insufficient rolling around on the ground of characters.
As it neared the end, I had a sudden thought that I was not going to cry. But I did. Not in a getting salty tears on my glasses way, but definitely a few sniffs and palpable dampness round the eyes.
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