Word: rigoletto
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Dove sono?" ("Where have they gone?"), from The Marriage of Figaro, would show a girl who has dropped her falsies. Others were plain wacky, e.g., "Parigi, o cara" ("Paris, my dear"), from Traviata, would show one lady demonstrating a strange new garment to another. "Caro name" ("Dear name"), from Rigoletto, would show a sugar daddy signing a fat check for his girl friend. Pressagent Williamson (whose clients have included Gladys Swarthout, Ezio Pinza, Helen Traubel) persuaded Austrian-born Artist Susan Perl to put her ideas on paper, found a California manufacturer to print the cartoons...
Mado Robin, 35, a petite ambassadress from the Paris Opera, opened the season as Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto, determined not to go unnoticed. During her first scene, before Rigoletto's house, she was just a demure little coloratura. But opportunity beckoned in her florid aria, Caro Nome, and Soprano Robin seized it: she unexpectedly gave out with what critics call a B "in altissimo"-up in the whistling range. The audience gasped at the piercing sound (which Conductor Fausto Cleva had specifically outlawed during rehearsals), and the critics scolded. Wrote the Examiner's Alexander Fried: "Startling...
...made her one of the finest dramatic sopranos on the Continent. Her own feeling about Penelope differed from the majority: "We can be thankful that a modern work is as strong as this. The world goes on. We can't always be singing Salome, Aïda and Rigoletto...
...born and free I want to die." Joseph Gotten as Canio in Pagliacci moans: "To have to act, act, when my brain whirls in an agony of madness! . . . Change into grins your sobs and suffering, change into a leer your sighs and your tears." Dennis King as Rigoletto shouts: "Unarmed though I be, I'll kill you, I warn you!" But the familiar music (in familiar performances by Rise Stevens, Jussi Bjoerling, Leonard Warren) restores the order of things. Most acceptable acting job is done by Deborah Kerr, who renders the ingenuous roles of Mimi in La Boheme...
...much in time and money to prepare it as five ordinary Verdi or Puccini operas, but would draw crowds for only about ten performances as compared with 30-odd for the Italian favorites. This year the Met is enjoying full houses (at about $19,000 a night) for its Rigoletto and La Boheme, while, even with Soprano Harshaw, performances of Tann-häuser and Walkure find about 10% of the seats empty...