Rigoletto: A Scottish Opera Production Review

Rigoletto: A Scottish Opera Production Reviewed by George Fleeton Verdi’s towering music-drama Rigoletto (Venice, 1851) is bullet-proof and, in the seventeen different productions of this opera which I have seen over many years, it largely avoids everything thrown at it by self-indulgent directors, egotistical designers and conductors who ignore the composer’s own precise but complex tempi and pulses. It’s always a pleasure to welcome Scottish Opera to Belfast (they have added Dublin to their tour schedule), especially since both Ellen Kent and Welsh National Opera no longer visit, albeit for very different reasons. The opening night performance at the Grand Opera House (June 16) played to a very full house. Some of the expressionist sets were clunky and distracting to say the least, as were some very dodgy and irritating lighting effects. And the use of female mannequin body bits, strewn randomly around the Duke of Mantua’s palace at Act 11 – even if he is a dissolute chauvinist and womaniser – exceeded the boundary of good taste and sound judgment in their too-obvious symbolic comment. Baritone Eddie Wade’s hapless Rigoletto was versatile, forceful even in his vulnerability, and he held the centre throughout with axa0xa0 fine voice that sounded reassuringly comfortable in this demanding music. Soprano Nadine Livingston, the most dressed down even nondescript Gilda I have ever seen, attacked what is probably the biggest role in her career with measurable vocal confidence and a self-belief that was impressive to witness. She was not best served by some lack-lustre conducting and such an unsympathetic production design. Most of the subtleties and sublimities of Verdi’s great score survive all of this by absorbing the flak, impervious as always to the many attempts to destabilise it. 160 years ago the arrival of this opera on the world stage was as mould-shattering as Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro in 1786 or Rossini’s Barber of Seville in 1816. Like them, Rigoletto drew a line in the sand, back behind which no future self-respecting composer dared to step. That energy and intensity then carried on into Verdi’s remaining eleven operas, reaching its apotheosis in French operaxa0 in Bizet’s Carmen in 1875 and, on Verdi’s retirement,xa0 in Puccini’s Tosca in 1900. On balance, this mixed bag of a Scottish Opera production of Rigoletto gave immense satisfaction to many on the night. It travels to the Grand Canal Theatre Dublin on June 21-23rd and 25th.]]>