Word: rigoletto
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...taken with the beauty of the original that he decided merely to rearrange the parts. "The figure emerged spontaneously," he says, and it reminded him of Renaissance portraits of Italian patricians. In his antic fashion, Steinberg named his creation Il Duca di Mantova, after the playboy nobleman in Rigoletto. Bernard Pfriem, a New York painter who had worked with hat blocks before, did not change the basic form of the block either. "It was a human image, after all. My idea was to retain the identity but to metamorphose it into a new image." So he added a telephone...
...Opera grew into one of the most interesting companies in America. It never had chic like Salzburg or Bay-reuth-but then, the European festivals do not offer beer, hot dogs and wild animals to patrons bored with La Traviata and Rigoletto. Besides, where else could one hear Gladys Swarthout and Rise Stevens break in their Carmens, see Jeanette MacDonald in Faust, catch James Melton in his first Madama Butterfly, or stroll into a Rigoletto and hear Jan Peerce and Robert Weede making their professional debuts...
Podgorny visited the huge industrial complex at Turin, was guest of honor at a gala performance of Rigoletto at La Scala in Milan, presided shortly thereafter at the signing of an official agreement for joint cinema production between the Soviet Union and Italy. He stayed at the Quirinale Palace during his visit to Saragat, but then moved out to take up residence at the Soviet embassy. Reason for the move: this week Podgorny was to become the first Soviet chief of state to visit the Pope, and he wanted to make clear his recognition that the Vatican and Italy...
...score. Though Verdi the patriot worked at odds with Verdi the composer, the fervor of his convictions could occasionally inspire him as well. The opening aria "Let us be free," for example, is charged with the kind of youthful brio that was to come to full flower in Rigoletto, written five years later. Fresh, forcefully direct, the Attila score was polished for six months by Conductor Amaducci, until each facet sparkled. The result was worthy of a setting in any opera house...
...music are sexy. Most operatic heroines fail to wait for the wedding ceremony (Manon, Mimi, Tosca, Aïda, Carmen, Santuzza, Brünnhilde), and they (Norma, Marguerite, Sieglinde, Suor Angelica) have a lot of illegitimate children. Whatever one may think of the plots, one remembers the characters. Rigoletto may end up absurdly with the heroine killed by mistake and then carried in a sack by her own father, who thinks he is carrying the corpse of her traducer; but the bitter, malevolent jester excoriating the decadent court society of his day remains unforgettable...