| Masterly Debuts in Verdi Revival |
Welsh National Opera |
| Welsh National Opera- Rigoletto , Millennium Centre Cardiff , June 28, 2010 |
Bryn Terfel's Hans Sachs naturally attracted enormous press and critical attention. But an exceptional week for WNO also saw Simon Keenlyside make his debut as “Rigoletto”.“I have been seeing Rigolettos since my childhood” said a music professional next to me in the audience “this is among the greatest.” The authority of the performance ignites immediately the character is left on stage to deliver the first great solo. “I don't even have the consolation of tears” runs the line from Piave's libretto. The caustic sardonic voice, the jester with license to taunt, belongs to a man without country and without friends. By the close this facade has been grimly shattered and he is “weeping tears of blood beneath my clown's face.” With his garishly baggy jacket and his strapped leg it is a powerfully physical performance. He even lifts the corpse of Sarah Coburn's Gilda, singing all the while. In her British debut Sarah Coburn’s long Scene Two solo is sunlight entering a life lived in the shadows. Carried off superbly it earned a deserved long applause from a clearly enthralled audience. James Macdonald’s production originally from 2002 has not lasted quite so well. Act One is an expressionistically angled banqueting room in a 1960 Washington DC. As the curtain rises so too does a prostitute from her client on a sofa. A table is overloaded with spirits and mixers. With the Courtiers in dinner jackets it has the feel and décor of films of the era. The Nicholas Ray cult film “Party Girl” springs to mind, not least because there too a limping hero takes on an Italian despot. The move to Rigoletto's house with its poor protection of a high chain link fence evokes “West Side Story” or “On the Waterfront.” The Act Two location of the Oval Office itself is less convincing. That the Duke holds power and uses it capriciously is clear from the drama. To locate it as that of the Presidency itself is not necessary. It is partly that the White House has been dramatised to excess in the last decade, partly because the nature of the Presidency precludes an unprotected night away in a garret. It is also the nature of Presidential power. It may not be palatable but it is not held by youth. It is long sought and its use characterised more by underlying conviction than aristocratic caprice. Numerous strong aspects in the direction compensate. A rich backcloth evokes a stormy D.C. with smoky street lights in front of a towering Capitol Building. The Courtiers- ”Cortigiani, vil razza dannata” “accursed race of courtiers"- are deployed across the stage with the studied care of a Veronese canvas. They execute a cruel mockery-cum-conga of Rigoletto's disability. Leah-Marian Jones' Maddalena injects heroin before descending to her tryst with the dissolute Duke. In the gloom, literal and metaphorical, Gilda lights herself a sparkler. David Soar’s Sparafucile, in an ankle-length fur-trimmed coat of leather, drips with malevolence. In the welter of emotional inconstancy it is an irony in Victor Hugo's plot that tragedy is impelled by the assassin's sense of fidelity to the wishes of his client. As in the best of opera the characters are torn by the claims of love. Gilda disobeys her father in not leaving Mantua. “Possente amor mi chiama” "mighty love beckons me". The chasm between romantic and sensual love is thrillingly shown and performed in Verdi’s innovatory quartet “Bella figlia dell’amore.” By the climax the mocking outsider Rigoletto has learnt too that “the voice of love is our heartbeat.” |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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