Popcorn at the Opera

It's Rigoletto on the menu again; you know that tubular pasta with a red sauce?  After a hearty plateful this afternoon, I am on an opera high.  It goes like this:  for months now I have been anticipating the Metropolitan Opera live broadcast of Rigoletto at a neighborhood movie theatre.  A cultural pinnacle as this is a mere 6 minute car drive away; 2.45 miles and costs only $22.  I can wear sweat clothes, no makeup, and slouch in the seats.  I can binge on a big bag of buttery popcorn while taking in a world class production.  Definitely puts the pop in the opera!

                        

The Duke (Piotr Beczala) doing his opening lounge act

Set Designer - Christine Jones

Choreographer - Steven Hoggett

I settle in to watch a Rigoletto first shown in 1851 Venice, time-warped to 60's Las Vegas and I am swept away and on for the ride. Director Michael Mayer believably brings the past to present with the Duke presiding over a casino and living in a palatial penthouse. He is the head of a rat pack and surrounded by show girls and an entourage.  Rigoletto is his funnyman. Yikes!

Rigoletto (Zeljko Lucic) crooning in a fashionable sweater of the times

Costume Designer - Susan Hilferty

As is often the case at these operas, I see absolutely no one that I know and although no spring chicken myself, everyone seems REALLY old.  Where are the young singers?  At the first intermission, Styrofoam containers of hot dogs and such disgusting foodstuffs appear, along with big gulps, providing vivid contrast to the televised Met intermission of well-dressed attendees sipping from stemware. However, the Esquire has a nice and informal ambiance and it is lunchtime, after all!

Intermission at the Metropolitan Opera House

I take the opportunity to move to a better seat and make a new friend with a seat-mate who is ingesting a double decker portabella sandwich with onions and pickles...His bravas, bravos, and bellissimas make the experience all the more fun and he applauds the screen.  Although not a singer, he offers me a recitation of Shakespeare's Sonnet #116. I'm overdosing with high culture! There are all sorts of opportunities and good things that can happen if you go to events alone and strike up conversations with strangers.

  

Act III - Gilda (Diana Damrau) and Rigoletto in the neon rain

Lighting design by Kevin Adams

One of my favorite parts in this Sin City rendition is Act III.  Neon lights arc above the stage, simulating the lightening and impending storm, and are synchronized with the music.  Alas, it's over too soon, at 3 hours and 31 minutes, two intermissions.

Esquire Theatre - seating for an intimate 221 - not a bad seat in the house

The music is changed to some pop pap as ushers pick up the trash...As always, I was the last to arrive and the last to leave.

The Met seats 3,800

Meanwhile, at the Met, the crew waxes the slanted stage floor...Farewell, till when I return in 2 weeks for Parsifal; find me in orchestra seating, row 10 center.  I'll share my popcorn with you!

A World Without Rigoletto

What gets me going in the morning more than a platter of Rigoletto? No, I'm not talking about a plate of pasta. Rigatoni is the tubular, ribbed noodle that comes in varying lengths and diameters and is sometimes curved. Served with a white or red sauce, or simply with butter, herbs and garlic, it is delicious.   

But much as I love Italian pasta, I love Italian opera even more!  And  I was talking about platters as slang for vinyl records.  I have a collection of records that I like to play when I exercise in the morning, and lately it's been the Rigoletto that gets me going. Just when I might come up with some excuse not to engage in weight-lifting and work-outs, I think, well, the time will go by quickly if I get to enjoy some beautiful music.  The recording that I am playing is with Richard Tucker as the Duke, Gianna D'Angelo as Gilda,  and Renato Capecchi as Rigoletto. 

Teatro Mantua

Rigoletto awaits me, and will awaken you, too, from your slumber.  If you have not had the pleasure of making this acquaintance, written by none other than Joe Green, aka as Giuseppe Verdi (1813 - 1901), you are in for a treat.  Last fall, just by sheer chance while channel surfing, I happened upon the BBC  and RAI production filmed on location in Mantua.   A star casting included Zubin Mehta as director,  Placido Domingo as Rigoletto, Vittorio Grigolo as the Duke, Julia Novikova as Gilda, and Ruggero Raimondi-Magdelene as Sparafucile.  

This opera has been a blockbuster since it was first performed in 1851. It had an international stage within five years, being seen in Venice, Rome, Naples, Vienna, Budapest, Brunn, Milan, Graz, Stuttgart, Prague, St. Petersburg, London, Warsaw, Bologna, Madrid, Athens, Lisbon, Constantinople, Tiflis, New York, Buenos Aires, Havana, and Rio de Janeiro.  This was when entertainment was about art and talent. I think that if I had been alive then, I might have been a Verdi groupie. As the playbill shown here for the Syracuse Opera describes: "This grand tragedy has seduction, an assassin, kidnappers and murder.  But the corpse of Rigoletto's daughter, Gilda is about the only thing that's stiff." Based on a play by Victor Hugo, Le roi s'amuse, it was bound to be tragic and heart-rending, as Hugo always tends to be.

A snippet of "Quanto dolor", one of many hit duets in the opera:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=p67TSWEI2Oo

In the BBC production, the duke was played by the not-too-hard-on-the-eyes Vittorio Grigolo.  He is the the quintessentially imperious scoundrel.

All three acts were filmed in Mantua, at the actual times of the day and night. The splendor of the Palazzo Ducale brings the opera to life in the most realistic and sumptuous way possible.  Costuming was equally opulent, as it always is in opera.

I had no fault with Placido Domingo advancing from his years as a tenor and singing the duke's  baritone role of Rigoletto. He is a great stage actor and has admitted that Rigoletto is such a powerfully complex and emotional piece that it still brings him to tears with its beauty. That the camera can zoom in from different angles provides a very intense and personal experience that  is bound to result in frequent reaching for the tissues. 

Act III.  The depressing mood is set with this outside-of-town tower.  It is a tragedy waiting to happen amidst misfortune, miscommunication, and mayhem. 

EVERYONE has to be familiar with this aria sung by the lecherous duke.  It became a big hit when first heard and was the most popular song of the season.

Rigoletto - put it on your bucket list, or it will be be a tragedy indeed that you have not truly lived before you die!  A world without Rigoletto - I can't imagine!