{"id":834,"date":"2014-02-15T13:54:32","date_gmt":"2014-02-15T13:54:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/?p=834"},"modified":"2014-02-15T13:54:32","modified_gmt":"2014-02-15T13:54:32","slug":"refreshing-rigoletto-you-must-be-joking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/2014\/02\/refreshing-rigoletto-you-must-be-joking.html","title":{"rendered":"Refreshing Rigoletto? You must be joking"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Quinn<\/a>

Quinn Kelsey as Rigoletto photograped by Alastair Muir<\/p><\/div>\n

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The English National Opera has a really big problem \u2013 or, rather, has given itself a big problem. It has decided to \u201crefresh\u201d its core repertory by commissioning a new production of Verdi\u2019s Rigoletto<\/i>. The rub is that the former staging wasn\u2019t just any old Rigoletto<\/i>, it was Jonathan Miller\u2019s greatest of all Rigolettos<\/i>, first staged in 1982 \u2013 a production that brought new audiences to the ENO for 30 years, was a huge critical success adding lustre to the reputation of the company, had been revived a dozen times at the Coliseum, most recently in 2009, transferred to New York, and was one of their major money-spinners.<\/p>\n

Set in Little Italy in New York in the 1950s, with the Duke of Mantua a Mafioso, Rigoletto a bartender, and Sparafucile and Maddalena the proprietors of a sleazy waterfront bar, the staging, remarkably, never got stale. This wasn\u2019t simply because of the \u201cconcept\u201d or the excellent sets and costumes: it stayed fresh because Sir Jonathan drilled his singers to remember, above all, that they were always singing to<\/i> someone else, usually someone on the stage with them, and only rarely to the audience. Like all his productions that I have ever seen, this Rigoletto<\/i> was dramatically taut. What the director did was, above all, to remain\u00a0 faithful to and respect the score and libretto. This is simple and elementary and, you\u2019d think, the first (and almost only) rule of directing.<\/p>\n

It is sad that so few opera directors show much knowledge of this particular first principle of lyric theatre.<\/p>\n

You might think it foolish to attempt to replace a production\u00a0 of the calibre of Miller\u2019s Rigoletto. <\/i>\u00a0And of course, it takes a brave soul to accept the challenge of directing it, but Christopher Alden was probably the right person to have a shot at it.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, he\u2019s failed; and this failure is going to cost the ENO dear. Most of my fellow opera critics have damned it, (with at best faint praise); but worse, I can\u2019t see it being popular enough with audiences to be revived. The production, first appeared (and failed) at the Lyric Opera in Chicago in 2000, and then (bombed) again in 2010 in Toronto, but at least these helped amortise its obviously high cost. This means that the ENO has discarded a much-loved, still-milking cow, in favour of a scrawny turkey.<\/p>\n

Michael Levine\u2019s wood-panelled, painted ceiling sets and costumes are meant to be contemporary with Verdi, which means that the omnipresent chorus is resplendent in white tie and tails, and the women\u2019s frocks are gorgeous.\u00a0 (It seemed to me that they\u2019d been looking at Edward Gorey\u2019s work.) But the sets don\u2019t change. Mr Alden says he and Levine, \u201cin this production, instead of moving from one naturalistic locale to the next\u2026 are placing all the events of Rigoletto<\/i> in what we call \u2018the gaming room\u2019, where the men retire after dinner to smoke and drink, read their papers, and play games of power, control and domination. The room represents both sides of Rigoletto\u2019s life, the workplace and the home.\u201d Naturalistic?\u00a0 What\u2019s un-naturalistic about this room that extends the entire width of the enormous Coliseum stage, with its potted plants, chairs, sofas, tables and lamps? It\u2019s a specific space, not a generic, symbolic or abstract location; and it simply does not work as the duke\u2019s bedroom, or Rigoletto\u2019s house or the waterfront bar. The failure of the set to work<\/i> as the locations called for by the text makes the staging incoherent. We often genuinely do not know where the characters are \u2013 nor do they.<\/p>\n

The additions are woeful \u2013 most especially the gratuitous female dancer and the mad onstage hanging of Monterone. However, I quite warmed to the suggestion, from the huge centre-stage portrait of her, that Giovanna is Gilda\u2019s mysterious mother.<\/p>\n

The duff concept is especially sad, because the production boasts some particularly fine musical performances. Conductor Graeme Jenkins gets some terrific playing from the orchestra, though a few of the Act I tempi are a little too rapid for the singers to keep up while singing in English (in my friend James Fenton\u2019s translation), though I imagine it is possible to cram more syllables into each bar when singing in Italian. As we can only understand the words by following the English surtitles anyway, wouldn\u2019t it be more sensible to perform it in Italian? (This is one of the inherent contradictions of the ENO\u2019s \u201cmission\u201d to perform in English.)<\/p>\n

The beautiful, burnished, rich baritone of Quinn Kelsey\u2019s Rigoletto is superlative, but he seems to have been directed to move clumsily like a brutal Quasimodo rather than a cunning Rigoletto, with his \u00a0smooth, sentimental side. Anna Christy\u2019s Gilda and Barry Banks\u2019s Duke are (mostly) so secure of pitch that you can just sit back, wallow and revel in their coloratura passages and top notes. Ms Christy\u2019s acting will, I\u2019m positive, get better as she settles in and remembers to sing to the person for whom her words are intended. Mr Banks doesn\u2019t quite look the part of the slick seducer, but he\u2019s reasonably comfortable in the role. Justina Gringyte hurls herself convincingly into the character of Maddalena, and her lower register is lovely. Peter Rose is a properly butch contract-killer. Diana Montague is almost wasted in the role of Giovanna, but she\u2019s the most convincing actor in the company \u2013 you haven\u2019t lived until you see her unfurl a 20-metre long white tablecloth.<\/p>\n

So was the ENO right to refresh its Rigoletto? Not on this showing. You can\u2019t blame Mr Alden for wanting to have a go. But if replacing Sir Jonathan\u2019s production\u00a0 was a matter of policy, the policy is wrong. It is, I\u2019m afraid, a waste of money \u2013 and of public money, at that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”gKYtCvM4cAQpsJxYekkWhiqX3TD4s6wQ”]   The English National Opera has a really big problem \u2013 or, rather, has given itself a big problem. It has decided to \u201crefresh\u201d its core repertory by commissioning a new production of Verdi\u2019s Rigoletto. The rub is that the former staging wasn\u2019t just any old Rigoletto, it was Jonathan Miller\u2019s greatest of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-834","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-blogroll-2","8":"category-elsewhere","9":"category-uncategorized","10":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/ENO-Rigoletto-2014-Alastair-Muir.jpg?fit=640%2C573&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbv6zV-ds","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}