RIGOLETTO
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Victor Hugo’s play Le roi s’amuse might as well have been written specifically as the basis of a blood-and-thunder opera by Verdi. The tale of the hunchbacked court jester who is the evil genius of his patron but a loving father to his daughter passed virtually unchanged through the hands of Verdi’s librettist Francesco Maria Piave. In an allegorical device favored by moralistic storytellers, the external deformity of Rigoletto is meant to mirror his character. The crucial irony of Hugo’s original drama lies in the destruction of all that Rigoletto values through the Duke of Mantua’s debaucheries–which Rigoletto has encouraged. He mocks the duke’s victims, but then his own daughter is kidnapped and turned over to the duke by courtiers who have felt the sharp tongue of the jester once too often. In revenge, Rigoletto arranges for the assassination of the duke–but the plot miscarries, and he discovers that he has engineered the murder of his daughter.
Unfortunately, the compressed operatic form obscures Rigoletto’s Svengalian tendencies. Moreover, he’s not onstage being nasty for very long, and the music in his scenes with Gilda distinctly portrays him as a most loving father. So the average operagoer feels more sympathy for him than he merits.
Conductor John Fiore and the Lyric Orchestra turned in a respectable performance. However, everyone would probably appreciate it if those members of the orchestra not otherwise engaged would make their way out of the pit to peruse their newspapers. C’mon, guys–some of us take this stuff seriously.
