Victor Hugo’s play Le Roi s’amuse—roughly, “The King amuses himself”—premiered on Nov. 22, 1832 in Paris and was banned the following morning for the next half-century.
In the five-act play, Hugo, author of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Misérables, depicts a womanizing King François I of France, his hunchbacked sharp-tongued jester Triboulet and the latter’s downfall as his actions lead inadvertently, if inevitably, to the death of his beloved daughter Blanche. Francois had died in 1547, but the censors interpreted the criticisms of the King character as an attack on the monarch of the time, King Louis-Philippe.
Composer Giuseppe Verdi reportedly was very taken with the character Triboulet’s Shakespearean dimensions and wanted to transform Hugo’s play into an opera, but ultimately changed the king into a duke, renamed all the characters and reset the story in Mantua, Italy to placate censors of his own.
At some point in that history, the opera was named The Curse, referencing the curse bestowed on the Duke and his jester Rigoletto by Count Monterone (bass-baritone Le Bu in the Santa Fe production), whose daughter the Duke debased. Despite his best efforts, Rigoletto fails to protect his beloved secret daughter Gilda and the curse comes true just like every Ancient Greek prophecy.
A week before its July 12 Rigoletto premiere, the Santa Fe Opera announced Spanish baritone Gerardo Bullón had withdrawn as the title character for personal reasons, making me wonder if perhaps the performance itself was cursed. Nothing could be further from the truth. Former Santa Fe Opera apprentice singer Michael Chioldi has stepped in for all seven performances, a co-production with Irish National Opera and Opera Zuid. Chioldi recently performed the same role at the Irish National Opera and it’s hard to imagine anyone improving upon his ability to evoke the pathos of deformed, sharp-tongued but doting father Rigoletto.
He’s perfectly met by soprano Elena Villalón as his beautiful, innocent and motherless daughter, whom Rigoletto has tried to sequester, excepting brief outings for church. It’s during one of these outings that Gilda catches the eye of the Duke (tenor Duke Kim, who was slightly hard to hear at moments on opening night ), who pretends to be a poor student named Gualtier Maldé, and who confesses his love to her. She returns his affections and Villalón thoroughly embodies the love-struck adolescent as she sings his (false name) in the aria “Caro nome” (“beloved name”).
Villalón savored every cadenza, as did the audience. But the Duke is not worthy of Gilda’s love and Rigoletto is not a romantic love story per se, even though the Duke would appear to have some actual feelings for Gilda.
Rather, it is the unusual story of a father’s love for his daughter, ending tragically as she dies in his arms. He’s brought this tragedy upon himself by provoking the inaugural curse, by hiring the assassin Sparafucile (bass Stephano Park in a terrific SFO debut) and, arguably, by sheltering his daughter to the point that she’s unable to recognize legitimate threats.
All this makes for a dynamic, if heady, three acts, with the entire production clocking in at approximately 2 1/2 hours with a 25-minute intermission.
The visual choices don’t leave much room for ambivalence and won me over halfway through Act 1 when I decided I could live with less-is-more given the outstanding performances of almost all the singers, and the high-octane orchestra led by Carlo Montanaro in his SFO debut.
Perhaps “less” is not quite the correct adjective. The set includes two actual sets: Rigoletto and Gilda’s doll-house home at the start of the opera and, later, as the inn at which father and daughter spy on Sparafucile, his sister Maddalena (mezzo-soprano Marcela Rahal) and the Duke. Otherwise, the opera seems to unfold outside of time and space, with various forms and colors of lighting via Lighting Designer Rick Fisher providing internal and external atmospherics and emotional cues. Costume designer Jean-Jacques Delmotte said, in a preview video available on the opera’s website, his concept had been to mix 17th-century and “timeless” clothes; to augment the tension between Rigoletto’s mixed identity as both clown and loving father; and to highlight the dastardly characters through the use of black apparel. The resulting costume array complements the mesmerizing surreality of Scene Designer Jamie Vartan’s vision.
While occasionally dizzying and darkly comic, Director Julien Chavaz (in his SFO premiere) ultimately extricates the very human story Verdi (and Hugo) fought to tell.
Music by Giuseppe Verdi /
libretto by Francesco Maria Piave
8:30 pm, July 16, 25; 8 pm July 29, Aug. 7, 15, 20
Seated ticket prices range from $37 to $409
SRO is $15
First time buyers with New Mexico ID can receive 40% off a pair of tickets
Call or visit the Box Office for the most up to date information and pricing, or visit santafeopera.org
