In fifty or a hundred years, they’ll be famous and heralded, and boy will we have egg on our faces.” Could be. But, again, what about the newcomer, the person encountering Rigoletto for the first time? Moreover, if you want to set an opera in 1960 Las Vegas, why not write an opera set in 1960 Las Vegas, or get someone else to do so? Why transform a Verdi opera set in sixteenth-century Mantua? Is it because no one around today can compose? Some people say, “There are plenty of Mozarts, Beethovens, and Verdis around, but we are too blind or deaf to notice them. They need to jazz up their lives with “untraditional” productions. We can understand that opera-world professionals are bored, seeing the same operas, over and over. But I wonder whether his production serves the opera. The director is sincere in what he is doing he obviously likes Rigoletto, and is not trying to mock or undermine it. Let me protest once more (maybe too much): I like this production, even aside from the naked girl. Act III is set in a strip club, complete with nekkid lady on a pole. And Act II of Rigoletto is one of the darkest and most disturbing acts in all of opera. Or at least it did on the night I attended.
When the curtain opens on Act II, which shows the aftermath of a very Vegassy party, the audience laughs. But what is the handicap, or deformity, that shapes his personality? The misfortune of which he constantly speaks? We don’t see it. The title character is not a hunchback, but a man who walks around normally. Countess Ceprano (I believe) is Marilyn Monroe, or a Marilyn Monroe look-alike. He sets his Rigoletto in 1960 Las Vegas-the time and place of the Rat Pack. The director here is Michael Mayer, of Broadway distinction. The gap between the production and the opera-that is, between the production and the Verdi-Piave work-is wide. I’m glad I saw it, and would happily see it again. But what about the newcomer? Had he truly experienced a Ballo, the way the composer and the librettist conceived it? I feel much the same way about the new Rigoletto. If you’ve seen Ballo a hundred times, and know it well, this was a pleasant break away. I said I liked it-that I enjoyed looking at it-but that it was not really a Ballo. In my January chronicle, I spoke of the Met’s new production of another Verdi opera, Un ballo in maschera. Who like that the Met is the last bastion of “traditional” productions, as they’re called. It was dreaded by those who want to stave off Europeanization for as long as possible. Who want the company to get with the program, and be more like Hamburg, Lille, and other cool capitals. It was looked forward to by those who think of the Met as Squaresville.
I say “anticipated.” What I mean is, it was the most looked forward to and the most dreaded. The most anticipated new production on the Metropolitan Opera calendar was that of Rigoletto.
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