Word: rigoletto
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...could close your eyes, tone down the orchestra a few notches and simply listen to the singing, you might think the Lowell House production of Verdi's Rigoletto a remarkably fine one. As it is, watching what happens on stage doesn't add much to what you hear. There simply isn't that much to see, and what one does see tends to lessen, not strengthen, any dramatic impact...
Which is not to say that the story behind Rigoletto constitutes great dramatic material. Court jester to the Duke of Mantua, the hunch-backed Rigoletto makes the mistake of ridiculing Monterone, a distraught father who accuses the notorious, skirt-chasing duke of dishonoring his daughter. Monterone responds by cursing Rigoletto, praying that he may know first-hand a father's misery. Of course, the curse comes true, for the duke has already espied Rigoletto's beautiful daughter Gilda from afar. Not knowing who she is, he proceeds to make her his next conquest...
Meanwhile, the duke's courtiers conspire to abduct Gilda and carry her off to the palace. When Rigoletto finally finds his daughter again, seduced and deflowered, he swears revenge and hires a paid assassin, Sparafucile, to murder the duke at a wayside inn. As for the denouement, suffice it to say that Gilda, despite ample evidence of her lover's inconstancy, dies to save his life...but not before singing a last extended duet with her broken-hearted father...
Victor Jannett's Rigoletto was less satisfying and, as the central character of the opera, embodied the troubles of the production. His baritone was adequate, if not especially exciting, but it somehow lacked sheer force at crucial moments. Part of the problem lay in that his voice was drowned out every time the orchestra launched into the "curse" motif. And although he made a valiant effort to look appropriately anguished, his arm-waving and facial expression never quite succeeded in evoking the passions of the embittered hunchback...
...album cover or the combination of Renata Tebaldi's ample bosom and her tight costume on the over of Aida) to the aural (Marilyn Horne singing "Mon coeur" from saint-Saen's Samson and Delilah, Anna Moffo's delivery of the single word disvelto in Verdi's Rigoletto) and even the oral (in a discussion of opera as addictive behavior, he calls listening to an entire opera the equivalent of locking himself in the bathroom to eat a quart of ice cream) and the olfactory (the unmistakable smell of his parent's wood stereo cabinet...