A CHALLENGING BALANCE The Irresistible Music and Story of Rigoletto

By Magda Krance

excited to take on the complexities of the tortured court jester who he called “one of the greatest creations that the theater of all countries and all times can boast…a creation worthy of Shakespeare!” famous Act One soprano aria, “Caro nome” (“Beloved name”), is a gorgeous expression of a schoolgirl crush, which later gives way to urgent declamation similar to her father’s as he forces her to witness the duke’s promiscuity.

It’s central to the human condition: People crave stories about others behaving badly, and always have, regardless of creed, color, or continent. From the Oresteia, Salome, and Macbeth to Ozark and countless others, they make us feel better about ourselves, whatever our faults–while also making us feel a little wrong for relishing them.

Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto exemplifies that dichotomy of enjoyment and discomfort with its abundant dramatic tension between the brutal story and the beautiful melodies. Inspired by Victor Hugo’s 1832 play Le roi s’amuse (The King Amuses Himself), Verdi was

In 1851, Verdi and his librettist Francesco Maria Piave set the story in Renaissance-era Mantua, whose duke, a serial sexual predator, routinely ravages the wives and daughters of courtiers and commoners. He’s egged on by Rigoletto, who also taunts those who’ve been humiliated and violated. A curse or maledizione from a furious father, Monterone, propels the story; it’s telegraphed by an ominous trumpet motif in the opening measures and recurs throughout the opera, signaling its impending fulfillment. Unbeknownst to the jester, the duke’s latest target is Rigoletto’s own daughter, Gilda, who’s confined at home but who has secretly met and become infatuated with the disguised duke. A bribe and a blindfold enable the courtiers to kidnap Gilda and bring her to the palazzo , thinking she’s the jester’s mistress. Rigoletto vows vengeance for his daughter’s rape and hires an assassin, but Monterone’s curse eventually comes true when Gilda sacrifices herself to save the duke.

The music brilliantly exposes the story’s appalling behaviors and emotional jolts in ways that were groundbreaking in the mid-1800s. In his baritone title character, Verdi created an outsider protagonist mired in meanness and bitterness (traits often associated with villainy) who could nevertheless touch audiences with his protective, desperate love for his daughter in a dangerous, heartless society. Instead of the multi-movement arias typical of his previous operas, Verdi has Rigoletto sing in a flowing declamatory style more like dramatic stage acting. Gilda’s

Traditionally tenors are the good guys; in Rigoletto the duke cloaks his monstrous acts in privilege and artful hypocrisy. He gets the opera’s most famous tune, “La donna è mobile,” jauntily denouncing women’s fickleness and also, horribly, revealing the unexpected contents of the assassin’s bag to Rigoletto. As noted in A History of Opera by Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker, this opera’s “most surprising innovation is in the tenor role…[his] musical idiom is close to comic opera… charming and persuasive,” even though in the plot the duke “is unrelievedly negative. Just as Lady Macbeth’s vocal virtuosity acquired a new, sinister meaning, so here the entire facade of easy, lyrical singing is called into question: it is placed at the command of a libertine, a man whose outer charm is grotesquely ill matched to his inner cynicism.” Caught between the duke and her father, Gilda moves “from extreme conventionality to extreme fragmentation” in her short, tragic journey to womanhood.

A dark thread that runs throughout the story is Sparafucile; he steps out of the shadows early on to offer his deadly services to Rigoletto–unnerved by this stranger who seems to read his thoughts. By Act Three, though, the jester is desperate to do business. He drags Gilda to Sparafucile’s inn on a dark and stormy night, forcing her to watch the duke seduce Sparafucile’s willing sister Maddalena. Rigoletto hires the assassin to dispatch the duke, but Maddalena urges her brother to kill the next stranger who comes through the (cont’d) door instead, sparing her lover, as she too has fallen for the dashing young charmer. In the thrilling penultimate scene of the opera, the siblings fight over how to proceed while Gilda, outside in the violent storm, vows to sacrifice herself to save the duke, and bursts through the door.

TDO’s season opener stars three formidable artists: George Gagnidze (debut), who has portrayed Rigoletto internationally to great acclaim; René Barbera, who brought down the house as Nadir last season in The Pearl Fishers; and the compelling rising star Madison Leonard (debut), a 2018 winner of the Metropolitan National Council Auditions. Bass Raymond Aceto (Sparafucile) and mezzo-soprano Nadia Krasteva (Maddalena) portray the scheming siblings, and baritone Nicholas Newton (Monterone) portrays the count whose course finally comes to pass.

Music Director Emmanuel Villaume conducts the production directed by Tomer Zvulun with sets by Erhard Rom (creators of TDO’s recent La Bohème), with costumes by Jessica Jahn (debut) and lighting by Robert Wierzel. Alexander Rom is chorus master.

This coproduction with TDO, Houston Grand Opera, and The Atlanta Opera updates the action to 1930s Italy amidst the rise of nationalism and fascism, conveying a disturbing sense of decadence and danger that mirrors facets of contemporary life. The creative team found inspiration in 20thcentury surrealist art to conjure the atmosphere we see on stage.

“Some of the most popular opera stories have the most controversial material,” says Ian Derrer, The Dallas Opera’s Kern Wildenthal General Director and CEO. “They’re full of seduction and abandonment, lying,