Traditional Repertoire Fares Better at the Met

In the wake of yesterday’s article that unleashed my disappointment with the Public Television broadcast of Terrence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones in its Metropolitan Opera Live in HD series, I felt a need to fall back on more traditional fare. As a result, yesterday’s PBS video was the recording of a performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto, which took place this past January 29. Two factors suggested that this would be a far more satisfying experience.

Quinn Kelsey in the title role of Bartlett Sher’s staging of Rigoletto (from the Web page for this production on The Metropolitan Opera Web site)

The first of these was that the staging was by Bartlett Sher, whose work has consistently satisfied my nit-picking. Almost as important, however was that the title role was being performed by baritone Quinn Kelsey. Kelsey is an alumnus of the Merola Opera Program. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in the role of Schaunard in Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème on March 29, 2008 and, in the following fall, he first appeared with the San Francisco Opera (SFO) as Marcello in that same opera. He would go on to sing the role of Rigoletto with SFO in the spring of 2017.

Five years on his account of this role is as intense as ever. Sher decided to transplant the setting from sixteenth-century Mantua to the equally decadent Berlin during the “roaring” Twenties, whose roar would soon be silenced by economic depression on a global scale. This made for a much darker presence, due to its proximity to a more familiar time. It also established a sense of ordinariness due to that proximity, which allowed the audience to establish more familiar relationships with not only the solo roles but also the crowds in the male chorus.

There was also a more compelling sense of the drama during the pivotal quartet in the final act, “Bella figlia dell’amore.” This is sung by four distinctively different characters, Rigoletto, his daughter Gilda, the philandering Duke (ruling Mantua in the original staging), and Maddalena, who assists her brother Sparafucile in his work as a professional assassin. Each of them has a unique personal perspective, which is often blunted when the staging has them singing side-by-side. Sher found just the right way to separate them, thus providing a clearer account of the differences that distinguish them.

Both the libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and its source, Victor Hugo’s play Le roi s’amuse, tend to run the risk of devolving into melodrama. One might even accuse Verdi of falling into the same trap. Fortunately, Sher was able to tease out a “sweet spot” of credibility in this narrative. As a result, this was a production that could be approached with a strong sense of empathy, rather than simply enjoying the familiar tunes.