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diff --git a/rigoletto.md b/rigoletto.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5f880c2 --- /dev/null +++ b/rigoletto.md @@ -0,0 +1,80 @@ +# Rigoletto +## Verdi +## Met Opera, 2024 October 4 + +## Production +Staging is a very large rectangular prism with 2 long sides and 2 short sides, taking up essentially the entire stage, though actors can move in front of it off the mechanism. The entire thing rotates in either direction and can rotate rather quickly. + +Despite a setting in 1930s Weimar Germany the architecture did not seem particularly Bauhaus. The Duke's palace was ornately/somewhat neoclassically decorated with flourishes, but there is an artificiality/cheapness not present in Rigoletto's home / the inn. + +Buildings in the city were heavy masses of brickwork/stone, and Rigoletto's home was quite humble. + +Later Rigoletto's home was swapped out for the assassin's inn, presumably just the same structure but redecorated. + +Sense of places being "different sides of the same coin" and parallels between the Duke's palace and Rigoletto and Sparafucile. Mirrors their depravity: the duke and Rigoletto both mock Ceprano at the beginning, and assassin breaks his word and kills Gilda instead. + +Mirroring is echoed by the scene with Rigoletto commenting on how being a jester is similar to being an assassin - one cuts with words, other with a knife. + +Centrally, Rigoletto mocks courtiers for the Duke seducing their wives/daughters, and then the exact same thing happens to him. Apparently other productions make him more of a "tragic dad" but this one definitely emphasizes his cruelty and hypocrisy. Comitragedy. + +The set is often displayed at angles with two sides facing audience at once, and often rotates quickly during the scenes as characters move in and on it from the stage. Adds to the continuity of settings. Sometimes the set is rotating while characters on stage struggle to keep up, almost like time/space conspiring to bring about the inevitable. + +Heavy walls add weight to the scenes, especially the kidnapping one. A few scenes (incl. final scene) where it's just Rigoletto in a small corner against a massive grey backdrop, underscoring his powerlessness. + +In the storm/murder scene the inn is bathed in red light but it doesn't feel gaudy or affected like the Met's Lucia di lammermoor. Lightning is done very well, not over the top. (It seems technically difficult to stage something like lightning.) Maybe there is a feeling that the tension is gradually increasing throughout so the dramatic staging is warranted, whereas in other operas it seems a bit forced. + +In this scene Gilda acts as a silent ghost, coming into the inn without using the door, handing the knife to Sparafucile in ghost-form, and then leaving and coming back in in human-form. Incredibly eery, movements choreographed like a dance, especially with the orchestra, red light, rain, and lightning. When she comes back in instead of Sparafucile stabbing her she grabs his hand and stabs herself with his knife, underscoring her sacrifice. At least in the end (if in a twisted way) she gains a sort of agency lacked heretofore, but there is a dark magical quality associated with that. + +Gilda changing clothes to a boy does not protect her; just exchanges her vulnerability from a feminine vulnerability (preyed upon by Duke's seduction) to a masculine vulnerability (stabbed to death). + +## Sound +Rigoletto excellent baritone, arias quite moving. Gilda soprano as well. Usually clowns are tenor, so the darker themes are signalled immediately. + +Rigoletto/Gilda baritone/soprano duets incredible. + +Duke felt flat and affected by comparison; maybe on purpose. The Duke's jaunty arias (eg La donna e mobile) incur a sinister sense as the opera goes on, especially as the La donna e mobile motif is repeated (briefly) in later scenes at Sparafucile's inn. Duke's tenor also seems to have less weight compared to Rigoletto. The motif becomes almost haunting, and appropriately Gilda acts as almost a ghost right before her murder. + +Monterone, though few lines was also an excellent baritone (and acting), curse feels like the natural culmination of years of Rigoletto's mocking, and even deserved. Commanding presence and voice even in his frailty. + +## Costuming +Rigoletto's clown makeup quite evident even at a distance, appropriate for beginning where he's mocking Ceprano but in sharp contrast to the second scene in the palace looking for Gilda. Truly feels like "monstrous" as he predicts. + +## Translation +The English surtitles are at times quite humorous and even irreverent, *especially* in dark scenes. + "I want two things - your sister and a drink" +- the sinisterness of laughter + +## Themes +### Laughter and crying +Clowns laugh but do not cry. Reminds one of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose antagonist's central thesis "monks should not laugh." + +Rigoletto after meeting Sparafucile) + Go, go, go, go. + We are two of a kind: my weapon is my tongue, + his is a dagger; + I am a man of laughter, + he strikes the fatal blow! + The old man cursed me... + O mankind! O nature!It was you who made me evil and corrupt! + I rage at my monstrous form, my cap and bells!To be permitted nothing but to laugh!I’m denied that common human right, to weep. + +Reminiscent of more serious clowns like Shakespeare's Touchstone - what happens when the trickster is himself tricked? + +An interpretation could be - Rigoletto's paradigm at court is through the lens of a fool, and everything is taken as a joke by definition. Thus his inability to weep for Ceprano leads directly to the curse and his own weeping. + +### The curse +There is a preoccupation with the curse as the main instigator of all the bad things, rather than (e.g.) the courtiers for kidnapping, or Gilda making the choice to come back. Even the final scene with Gilda dying references the curse, and apparently the original title of the opera was The Curse. + +Adds to the sense of inevitability, but also, possibly points to Rigoletto's awareness of his guilt, as the curse was directly due to his mocking Monterone. + +### La donna e mobile +There is a theme of women being easily tricked, Ceprano's wife, Gilda, Gilda's maid, even Maddalena, who as a "seductress" type character presumably is able to trick men, but everyone incl. her immediately falls for the Duke's relatively vacuous proclamations of love. + +The La donna e mobile motif reinforces this theme even when not directly part of the plot, and the easily-fooled women trope is recalled in a more sinister light. Gilda even says "this is all because I didn't listen to you [Rigoletto]". Seems unsurprising for an opera for its time, but I didn't notice any production choices challenging this or offering more nuance here. + +### No heroes +Rigoletto portrayed unsympathetically, though makes his grief even more poetic (and performance impressive as audience is genuinely moved). Even a side character like the maid allows Duke to infiltrate, accepts a bribe, and ends up with Gilda getting kidnapped. + +There is Gilda who seems to be the only morally OK character, but even she willingly/irrationally sacrifices herself for the duke who she knows does not love her. + +Sparafucile rejects Maddalena's proposal to kill Rigoletto saying that he honors his contracts and does not betray clients. But he readily agrees to killing some random person instead of the Duke, which seems to also be breaking his contract (in addition to not making much sense, wouldn't Rigoletto realize the next day the target was not killed? unless Sparafucile is planning on skipping town, but for 20 crowns? unclear how much this is exactly). |