Word: rigolettos
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...music director Stewart Robertson hire young artists who know how to move as well as sing and directors and designers with a knack for knocking the rust off tired masterpieces. Add to this the special pleasure of watching opera in a theater small enough that you can see Rigoletto's eyebrow twitch from the back row of the balcony, and you get productions so bold and vivid that they make you remember why you fell in love with opera in the first place...
...liked to imitate roles according to my voice, like Rigoletto. I would play a CD and start singing along...
...want to sing Verdi baritone roles like Rigoletto, Don Carlo--every opera has a baritone role. He was pretty big on that...
...problems were mirrored in the male chorus, who had no better luck overcoming the blast of the orchestra and always looked somewhat out of order when coming onstage. There's a heartrending scene in Act Three, for example, in which the duke's toadies block Rigoletto's entrance to their lord's chambers, kicking the poor hunchback until his angry recriminations collapse into a pitiful plea for the return of his daughter. It's a moment that can move one to tears; yet here it looked so stagey that it failed to resonate...
Someone came up with the less-than-brilliant idea of slapping a '50s-retro veneer on all the singers' clothes and gestures. Rigoletto in hat and coat recalls Willy Loman with a hump; Gilda sports a flaring gray poodle-skirt, a bright red cardigan sweater and ponytail tied with a matching red ribbon. The duke, when he comes a-courting, looks sublimely ridiculous in a red monogrammed vest. Even the courtship scene between the duke and Gilda is straight out of the '50s, reminiscent of that porch swing on a summer night--a worthy tradition...