Versions of versions, interpretations and translations, ideas refracting off ideas... Verdi based his 1851 Rigoletto, originally to be called La maledizione (The Curse), on Victor Hugo’s 1832 scandalous French play Le roi s’amuse, both set in the sixteenth century.
Since then, directors have amused themselves with moving Rigoletto to Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, to 1960s Las Vegas (this one I’ve seen), to Berlusconi’s licentious world. Jonathan Miller’s 1982 version set in 1950s New York’s Little Italy—now on its fourteenth iteration—is in interesting company. Then we have James Fenton’s English translation, which incorporates a few Italian words for flavour.
Miller seems to be l’homme du jour at ENO, his Rigoletto following hard upon his La bohème, both extremely popular with their audiences. Un vrai homme de theatre par excellence, Miller with an eye and ear for drama chases that curse, together with his designers Patrick Robertson and Rosemary Vercoe, through its unfolding three acts, and the loves, lies, evasions, misunderstandings and assumptions. What an unreliable world. Who can you trust?
You can trust Verdi, who is brought to vigorous life in the pit by the ENO orchestra under the persuasive baton of former music director of Opera North, Richard Farnes—the melodrama is all in there, from thunderous dramatic premonition to poignancy to near declamatory silence. The overture presages what is to come, and sends shivers down the spine.
Rigoletto (Weston Hurt making his debut here), now a bartender not a jester, serves the “Duke” and his men sycophantically, joining in the mockery of the cuckolded husbands and distraught fathers whose daughters have been seduced. One such father, Count Monterone (baritone David Kempster), curses them all. Each act ends with the curse.
Rigoletto feels the curse keenly, for he has a daughter, Gilda (soprano Robyn Allegra Parton, debuting with ENO, has an astonishing range), safe as he thinks under lock and key, only allowed out, chaperoned by mercenary servant companion Giovanna (Sarah Jane Lewis), to church. There she spots and is spotted by a handsome young man (the Duke)… and falls for him. Sound familiar?
The Duke’s henchmen think Rigoletto is keeping a mistress in his humble abode and abduct her with Rigoletto’s blindfolded assistance for the Duke’s pleasure. Rigoletto pleads with them in their uptown hotel, and they are shocked to hear it is his daughter—isn’t family meant to be everything for the Mafia? But they turn their backs on him. The male chorus is on wondrous form.
Rigoletto seeks the services of assassin Sparafucile (bass William Thomas terrific), but his sister Maddalena (rich-toned mezzo Amy Holyland), whom the insatiable Duke beds in their rundown downtown café with its jukebox under a poster for the 1953 film From Here to Eternity and rooms by the hour, persuades him not to kill the Duke, but find a substitute body to give to Rigoletto.
Bad gets worse. The body is Gilda dressed as a boy, come to sacrifice herself for that dastardly Duke, who sings of fickle women as feathers in the wind (sounds better as La donna è mobile qual piuma al vento), and questa o quella he doesn't care, they’re all the same to him. Rigoletto has proved to her what the Duke is, but love is strong. As fatal attractions go, this one has something Faustian about it.
A harsh wind does blow, lighting (Robert Bryan) is dark, men lurk in shadows, dark deeds are done, whilst the Mafia clan party in their high-class hotels with live band on stage—and suspicious violin case cliché. Interestingly, neither Gilda nor we know much about her father. And never lock your daughters away. Literature, not least Shakespeare, warns us as much.
Fate is fickle, never mind women. The bad get away with it, the innocent suffer, though Rigoletto is not exactly stain-free. Vengeance / vendetta and transgression go hand in hand. Verdi’s tragedy, his sixteenth opera out of twenty-six, hits hard in the final act, in the Bella figlia dell’ amore quartet, when the Duke is seducing Maddalena inside the bay-fronted shop, as Rigoletto and Gilda watch outside, a capsule of the entire opera.
Coloratura soprano Parton’s Gilda is almost too powerful a voice for Hurt’s soft, sensitive baritone. Yongzhao Yu’s (also making his debut with ENO) Duke has a seductive tenor voice if not a stage presence. Baritone Patrick Alexander Keefe has presence to spare as loyal henchman Marullo, with voice to match—he recently made a fine Schaunard on this very stage.
Under revival director Elaine Tyler-Hall’s capable hands, Miller’s legacy lives on—he worked on some fifteen productions here. I wonder if he’d have been happy with some of the stiff acting.