United States Verdi, Rigoletto: Soloists, Refrain and Orchestra of LA Opera / James Conlon (conductor). Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles, 31.5.2025. (JRo)
Verdi’s Rigoletto abounds in stunning melodies, heart-wrenching drama and biting social criticism. It’s arguably his most interesting opera. When the singers portraying Rigoletto and Gilda are dramatically and musically safe, the opera isn’t lower than transferring. Then, as soon as in a lifetime, a efficiency arrives that turns into greater than a high-quality evening on the opera.
LA Opera’s manufacturing with Quinn Kelsey as Rigoletto, Lisette Oropesa as Gilda and James Conlon within the pit will linger within the reminiscence lengthy after different productions fade. This was a unprecedented evening of music and drama. Kelsey inhabited the function so utterly that I forgot I used to be within the theatre watching an leisure: he laid naked Rigoletto’s soul for all to see. His heat, honeyed baritone was wealthy in energy, nuance and colour, and his physique language, so natural to the hunchbacked jester, weary and beleaguered from his life at courtroom, felt like he wasn’t performing. He moved from surly jester to doting father to a person undone by occasions with slight changes to his bearing that spoke volumes.
Lisette Oropesa, along with her stunning tone, slight body and plausible girlishness was completely convincing because the harmless daughter, hunted by the Duke of Mantua and his fellow debauchees. From her tender duet with Kelsey in Act I, starting with Rigoletto’s injunction to the maid (‘Veglia o donna, questo fiore’) to their agonized ‘Piangi fanciulla’ of Act II, Oropesa and Kelsey had been deeply attuned to 1 one other. After Gilda was delivered to the Duke for his pleasure and she or he discovered her father exterior within the corridor, they had been two shipwrecked souls, however in such true concord that I felt like a voyeur invading their privateness. Oropesa navigated the transition from innocence to maturity each in her stage presence and voice, transferring from lyric coloratura to dramatic soprano which distinguishes her altered state.
René Barbera sang with the gusto befitting his function because the lascivious duke. From his first second on stage, he was in full voice, opening with the bouncing ‘Questa o quella’ which establishes his sense of imperial entitlement. His glowing, Italianate tenor shone in ‘La donna è cellular’ and in his disconsolate aria of Act II, when he thought Gilda had flown from her home.
From the ominous orchestral prelude that inaugurates Monterone’s curse to the buoyant melodies, tender duets and arias and on to the catastrophic storm and murderous conclusion, Conlon performed with the surehandedness and artistry we’ve come to anticipate from this peerless interpreter of Verdi’s music.
Act III, with its extraordinary quartet and orchestral interpretation of a raging storm via to the unintentional homicide of Gilda, was riveting. Each voice within the quartet – Kelsey, Oropesa, Barbera and the compelling Sarah Saturnino as Maddalena – was in steadiness, making a uncooked and scary portent of occasions to come back.
As Sparafucile, Peixin Chen along with his vigorous bass was a convincing murderer, wearing stripes and suspenders like a personality from the seedy underworld of The Threepenny Opera. He had the steely willpower to do his job mixed with the nonchalance of the really amoral man. He was notably chilling within the fierce trio within the midst of the tempest. Additionally of observe had been Blake Denson as Depend Monterone, whose curse varieties the core of the opera and haunts Rigoletto to the bitter finish, and Hyungjin Son because the courtier, Marullo.
The Males’s Refrain was a personality in itself. Typically masked as grotesque animals or with odd human faces, they conjured a pack of wolves, able to devour on the slightest provocation. They flooded the stage with track and their highly effective presence.
The modernist units by Erhard Rom had been evocative of Fascist Italy the place the manufacturing was set. Amid the tall columns of a Ducal Palace, a Mannerist-style drawing of Dionysius dominated the corridor – a becoming picture. Jessica Jahn’s costumes depicted the jester as a humpbacked Harlequin and dressed the remainder of the solid in apparel of the Twenties and Nineteen Thirties.
Tomer Zvulun’s course was excellent (there was one hitch within the abduction scene, however this was a mere hiccup). In an excellent stroke, he created a formidable idea for the ending: Rigoletto, upon listening to the far-off singing of the Duke’s ‘La donna è cellular,’ imagined he was nonetheless alive after his contracted homicide. On his knees in despair, Rigoletto repeatedly stabbed the physique within the sack. It was a horrifying motion, figuring out that Gilda was hidden inside. As an alternative of the normal ending, with Rigoletto holding a nonetheless respiration Gilda in his arms, Oropesa entered in a white slip and moved slowly throughout the stage – a specter now haunting her father. It was on this guise that she sang her farewell to him, and we had been left to mourn her tragic dying together with the damaged jester.
Jane Rosenberg
Manufacturing:
Director – Tomer Zvulun
Units – Erhard Rom
Costumes – Jessica Jahn
Lighting – Robert Wierzel
Refrain director – Jeremy Frank
Choreographer – Ricardo Aponte
Battle & Intimacy director – Andrew Kenneth Moss
Solid:
Rigoletto – Quinn Kelsey
Gilda – Lisette Oropesa
Duke of Mantua – René Barbera
Depend Monterone – Blake Denson
Sparafucile – Peixin Chen
Maddalena – Sarah Saturnino
Marullo – Hyungjin Son
Borsa – Nathan Bowles
Depend Ceprano – Vinícius Costa
Giovanna – Madeleine Lyon
Countess Ceprano / Web page – Gabrielle Turgeon
