Rigoletto at the Met review – you can’t go wrong with some vintage Verdi

Disturbing; scathing; heart-rending; and relevant. If a production of Rigoletto sees the audience heading home humming the best – and they are the very best – arias the operatic canon has to offer, then the production has failed. 

No-one headed to the A train from the Lincoln Center after last Saturday’s matinee skipping lightly through Manhattan’s fresh-fallen snow. The new Bartlett Sher Met production succeeded in spades. I left the auditorium thoughtful, unusually plunged in gloom. 

I defy any father witnessing the death of the beautiful Gilda at the hands of the slick assassin Sparafucile and, Rigoletto’s tragic discovery of his daughter’s bagged corpse in that final scene of slow-dawning despair, to avoid a stomach-churning.I will take the detail of the action as familiar to readers.

In Rigoletto, Verdi was not providing an evening’s entertainment. This is a sit up and take notice tale. The opera is loosely based on Shakespeare’s King Lear and sprang to life during a burst of frenetic composing creativity. Luisa Miller, Naples 1849. Stefalio, Trieste 1850 and then a commission for an opera on Venice – not even a title at the time – in 1851. Verdi was on a roll. In short order there followed La Traviata, 1852 then Il Trovatore, 1853.

Rigoletto, based on Victor Hugo’s scandalous, banned book, Le Roi s’Amuse, published in 1832, about debauched royalty – plainly Francis I of France – and corrupted aristocratic morals, had a rough ride with the Austrian censors. It had to wait until 1882 for wide circulation. 

Verdi’s copious correspondence with his librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, gives a blow-by-blow account of his dealings with the Austrian thought police. “The subject is grand. It’s Victor Hugo’s Le Roi s’Amuse, with the hero Triboulet. By, God, that one can’t go wrong. Do it at once.”

And when Piave, who knew a thing or two about censors, baulked, Verdi egged him on: “We shan’t find something better. Who knows, they allowed Ernani”. That opera was based on Hernani, another Hugo oeuvre. 

An exception was taken because in the opening scene a king was to be found in flagrante, hiding in a cupboard. 

No king would ever hide in a cupboard. The very idea. Degrading. 

Nowadays, the king would simply launch an inquiry to establish whether or not he had been in the cupboard in the first place. Why should he be expected to remember? Piffling. Monarchs should not be troubled by such trivial matters.

For Ernani, Piave was new to the job, a neophyte censor confronter. But now he was cunning, chose his censor wisely and set the plot in Renaissance times. The licentious Duke of Mantua, deflowerer of virgins, was safely parked in the 16th century, away from hungry class-action lawyers.

To put a country mile between Rigoletto and the original Hugo text the chief protagonist – there are no heroes in this work – was changed from Triboulet to Rigoletto. 

Verdi’s original preferred title was La maledixione, The curse. In a first run round, the course censors described the original as of “repulsive morality” and singled out the title, Le Maledixione as being of “obscene triviality”. The censors even complained about Gilda’s body being in a sack. Quick name change called for.

Not without misgivings. The hinge of the action is the personal curse placed on Rigoletto by Count Monterone, a father outraged by the Duke’s ravaging his daughter, mocked by the court and Rigoletto, the Duke’s jester, then hauled to a grisly death. 

As he is dragged away, Monterone curses the Duke and the court but reserves a special “maledixione” for Rigoletto. It is that second curse that haunts the jester and recurs in sinister, single repeated note rat-a-tat form throughout the action.

Monterone rounds on Rigoletto with a voice of thunder: “You serpent, you laugh at my pain as a father. Horrore!” Chords creep. The importance of the curse is underpinned by the sinister key of C minor, and it is never again repeated in that key. 

The uniqueness of that stand-alone dramatic moment is imprinted indelibly on the audience’s mind. Here Verdi, for all his sumptuous melodic ability, uses a profound musical gesture rather than exquisite exposition to make his point.

Paternal grief was up close and personal for Verdi. Following the death of two infant children, his beloved wife, Margherita Barezzi, died in 1840. 

The choice of cast to present a drama like this is always crucial. 

The original Rigoletto was Felice Varesi, not the best singer of the day, but a consummate actor. Verdi valued acting over singing for this role. Varesi made the role his own and shaped Rigoletto for future generations.

It is serendipitous that Quinn Kelsey, the American baritone, combines voice and acting at the highest level and is a Met Verdi veteran. He sang Monterone in a 2008 production and, relevantly, Germont in La Traviata in 2018. Another powerful Verdi father role. Varesi was the orginal Germont in La Traviata. 

Kelsey has the ability to move from light to dark in an instant. His is a Rigoletto that constantly shimmers between the two. A character in quantum flux. The man is facing the destructive contradictions of being deformed, a jester forced to make people laugh, mocked in turn and a loving father intent on protecting his daughter’s virtue. 

He rails against nature yet cannot shed tears. “Outwardly deformed, and ridiculous, yet inwardly, so full of love”, as Verdi instructed Piave. Kelsey gets all of that and a more involving portrayal of the tortured Rigoletto it would be hard to find.

Teaming Kelsey with Italian soprano, Rosa Feola, was inspired casting. Gilda is her signature role, and previous experience working alongside Kelsey helped the duo deliver a convincingly flawless performance. 

Gilda’s character is a frail innocent at the start; a determined, if deluded, defender of the duke despite her violation by the end.

Flutes represent her frailty in her only full aria, “Caro nome” in Act I. Two flutes play the melody together. Here the music blends completely with her personality. Dances and trills are frissons. She breathes in anticipation.

Breaks up phrases. There are light cadenzas, although never a dramatic showpiece. Not fireworks. Gilda always sounds natural and vulnerable.

After the Met’s infamous Michael Meyer’s Vegas Rigoletto of 2013, much comment has been made about Sher’s decision to adopt a German Weimar republic setting. 

True, there is a whiff of Weimar decadence in the air, but it is not overpowering. I thought Sher had brilliantly set the work in no period at all. A work for our time: A work for any time.

Yes, there are lots of long trench coats, black hats and art deco sets, but also frogged uniforms and Rigoletto’s top hat. Sher was creating a mood, not a period and it reflects Verdi’s music well.

The score is choc-full of “mood.” That curse. The Duke’s famous bouncing La donna é mobile aria in Act III, which, from behind the scenes, comes back to taunt Rigoletto in the final scene when the Duke is meant to be dead, “in the bag”, but is clearly alive and well behind the arras. 

The court is depicted as depraved in a savage, tearing romp of cutting chords. These people are self evidently trivial. They are high on drugs. Rigoletto’s dilemma is that he has to make them laugh. Egg them on, even as they self-evidently despise him. 

The assassin, Sparafucile’s music is dark and mysterious. The combination of Sparifucile, Andre Mastroni’s resonating bass and Rigoletto’s baritone are menacing, underpinned by cellos, double bass and woodwind.

There is the romantic image of the composer slaving for weeks at a desk, quill in hand, agonising over every detail of the sublime creation. Well, Wagner may have had self-induced cerebral crises over his grand art creations, but Verdi did not. 

The orchestration of Rigoletto was completed only three weeks before the premiere. During rehearsals, Verdi made many amendments to the score. The music you listen to today and assume well-settled came hot off the Verdi press. 

Maestro Antonio Pappano, Musical Director of The Royal Opera House, likes to point out that in 1941 a manuscript sketch of Rigoletto emerged, showing that the original La donna é mobile was miles away from the final version. Producing masterpieces to order took a tremendous amount of work, and rework. 

The performance was conducted by Daniele Rustioni, the Italian who has stepped up to the rostrum as the Met’s music director, Yannick Nézy-Séguin seems to be taking an unexplained step back. 

To me, Rustioni seems uninvolved and mechanical. He lacks Nézy-Séguin’s infectious joie de vivre in the pit. Good at keeping time, but that’s it. Perhaps he is more dynamic during rehearsals. But I harbour a lingering suspicion that the Met orchestra is so well-seasoned as to be able to deliver a sparkling performance without any intervening conductor at all.

The Met is committed to Rustioni – 14 appearances this season. Not quite betting the ranch, but close to it. 

This Sher production coincides with a new ROH offering from Oliver Mears, which opened the season in September 2021. A wilder, modern take, with a Renaissance nod to Caravaggio on the stage curtain, the production was well-received.

Rosa Feola will arrive hotfoot from New York to reprise Gilda on 18 February. She is likely taking her Day 2 Covid test right now, before beginning rehearsals. 

Too much Rigoletto already? Not on your life. The Mears production for ROH is brilliant, but the Met’s more understated, subtle Sher offering simply proves you can’t get enough of a good Verdi.