Mozart - The Magic Flute (Belfast, 2019)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Die Zauberflöte

Scottish Opera, 2019

Tobias Ringborg, Thomas Allen, Peter Gijsbertsen, James Cleverton, Julia Sitkovetsky, Gemma Summerfield, James Creswell, Adrian Thompson, Jeni Bern, Bethan Langford, Sioned Gwen Davies, Sofia Troncoso

Grand Opera House, Belfast - 27th June 2019

There are many reasons why The Magic Flute is considered to be a marvel of opera and any one of them is a good enough reason why you should never pass up an opportunity to see it. There are many ways of looking at the work, it's capable of being presented in any number of ways and there's always the potential to reveal many fresh perspectives. You could say the same about any mature Mozart opera of course but Die Zauberflöte has such a variety of tones and challenges that ensure that when you get it right it's dazzling. The Scottish Opera production is definitely that.

It's even worth going to see the same production that you might have already seen before, because what makes the Scottish Opera Magic Flute special is how it takes advantage of all those many facets of Mozart's genius that go into this work, but above all it makes you smile. This same production was last presented in Belfast seven years ago and my recollection was that it was a memorable production for its visual look and presentation more than any radical insights or interpretation is forgotten, but I had forgotten just how entertaining it is and really just how brilliantly it captures and transports Mozart's genius across the centuries.

Sir Thomas Allen's steampunk setting didn't seem so important this time. It doesn't really invite any consideration or reveal any great insights into the work. If you want you can see it as a bold alternate-world look at what the future could potentially be/have been, of the necessity to be prepared to face change in the world. The armoured men scene and final trials bring you back to those themes, Mozart's belief in the betterment of humanity through change, enduring the challenges and hardships that come with it but with trust, faith, love, steadfastness and truth they will be equipped to endure what lies ahead in the future. So it's in there in the production and it's certainly welcome to have something to think about amidst all the ritual Masonic nonsense of the second half, but it's by no means the central point of this production.

The setting suggests something else that is important to help humanity get through the challenges of what lies ahead, and that's music. The fairground attraction aspect of the Scottish Opera production does bring the work back to its popular Singspiel music hall roots, and to the ideal of music as entertainment. It's called The Magic Flute and music does charm the savage beasts in the work. Between them Mozart and theatrical entrepreneur Emmanuel Schikaneder know exactly what makes people tick and know what they want, and they give it to them in this work. And Thomas Allen's Scottish Opera production brings that out superbly.

But there's much more to Die Zauberflöte than that; there are a whole variety of musical tones to the work, from ceremonial to playful, from joyous to the depths of despair. Conductor Tobias Ringborg and the cast ensure that all these moods are catered for here. Julia Sitkovetsky's Queen of the Night was superb, bring all the vocal fireworks, Gemma Summerfield stood out as a much stronger Pamina than we usually find in this opera (as sign of the times maybe), her 'Ach, ich fühl's' impressive, measuring the highs and lows of her character's experience. It's not so much the clichéd roller-coaster as much as a demonstration of the range and ability of Mozart and his capacity to express, understand the whole range of human experiences and qualities, conflicts and doubts.

While all the various aspects of the work are well catered for, it's humour that takes precedence. In comparison to the 2012 production, where Nicky Spence brought a more down-to-earth quality and knowing humour to the proceedings, Peter Gijsbertsen is a rather more traditional earnest straightman Tamino to Papageno and James Cleverton took full advantage of this. If Scottish Opera's Die Zauberflöte almost becomes the Papageno show however, it's not without justification, as Papageno is the one figure who brings out that essential spirit and recognition that all of us, any one of us can be better.

Papageno is the ordinary person amidst all these grand figures; he's not so brave, not so perfect and he can speak without thinking and make mistakes. He literally speaks directly to the audience, and - in dual role as Master of Ceremonies - he even tips a nod and a wink to the audience that reminds us that we don't need to take it all too seriously. Maybe with companionship, food, wine and maybe even a metaphorical drug of choice now and again we have all the nourishment one needs to enjoy the magic of life. And the magic of music too, which of course is present and an essential part of Papageno's world.

There aren't many operas that can carry that kind of message of universal importance in such an entertaining form that brought the house of the Grand Opera House in Belfast to it's feet. Personally, I had a grin plastered on my face all the way through. This was a very welcome return of the Scottish Opera's 2012 production of The Magic Flute, and I'd definitely go and see it again in another seven years time. Heck, I'd happily go and see it again tomorrow.

Links: Scottish Opera

Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin (Belfast, 2018)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin

Scottish Opera, 2018

Stuart Stratford, Oliver Mears, Samuel Dale Johnson, Natalya Romaniw, Peter Auty, Sioned Gwen Davies, Alison Kettlewell, Anne-Marie Owens, Graeme Broadbent, Christopher Gillett, Alexey Gusev, James Platt, Matthew Kimble

Grand Opera House, Belfast - 28 June 2018

Pushkin's Eugene Onegin has been praised as "an encyclopaedia of Russian life" but it's one of those works that manages to encapsulate the characteristics and behaviours of a nation within a story of the intimate sadness and tragic fate that life holds in store for many of us. Pushkin wrote his own tragic Russian story, killed in a duel over a romantic dispute like Lensky in his great masterpiece, and Tchaikovsky poured his own personal, marital and emotional struggles into his work here, and the personal input of both creators can be deeply felt in Eugene Onegin.

It's not much to ask to have that reflected and expect to feel deeply moved by a performance of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, and while it rarely fails to hit the mark, there are many ways of approaching the subject. At one extreme you can have Stefan Herheim turning the work indeed into "an encyclopaedia of Russian life" complete with cosmonauts, Red Army troops and a dancing bear taking it right up to the present day, making the point that the Russian character - as well as the essential human character - remains largely unchanged. At the other minimalist extreme, Robert Carsen ties the emotional impact of the work and the course of a life to the colours of the seasons. Others, such as Krzysztof Warlikowski, have focussed on how much of Tchaikovsky's life and troubled sexual identity can be clearly mapped onto the characters in the story.

Oliver Mears, the current artistic director of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden and former director of NI Opera, makes a return visit with his Scottish Opera production of Eugene Onegin and doesn't attempt anything quite as radical as the above examples, but in another way it taps into the idea of simple lives caught up in something greater. What it does manage to do is grasp that sense of the scope of life and love, of the personal and intimate placed within the greater context of life, memory and the passing of time; the madness and insensitivity of youth that can have an impact that resonates through a whole life and that we can only grasp the enormity of it when it's far too late to change anything.

Mears employs a simple enough device to get this across, having the silent figure of an elderly Tatyana recall and rewatch a significant event in her youth that would forever determine its future direction, all of it taking place in a single room of fading memory. I was immediately resistant to the idea, since the ending in Tchaikovsky's opera - and the melancholic tone of the work throughout - already places the work into the context of memory and the passing of time. Tatyana's rejection of the repentant Onegin at the end of the opera, even though she is clearly in love with him, is an immensely powerful conclusion that could hardly be delivered in a more effective manner with the addition of another rejection of Tatyana finally tearing up the letter and forever setting the matter to rest.

On the other hand it's quite plausible that the matter between Tatyana and Onegin might certainly be over, but both will still carry the regret for the rest of their lives. If it doesn't make the conclusion any more devastating, it succeeds in driving the point home, particularly as Stuart Stratford and the Scottish Opera Orchestra deliver the final blows mercilessly after succeeding in holding the audience in a state of romantic melancholy for the larger part of the performance, conserving those energies for the other real moments of emotional impact; in Onegin's rejection of Tatyana's love letter and in the tragic and foolhardy death of Lensky in the duel.

There are other ways of showing how we can end up paying for the folly of youth later in life, but most obviously it's Onegin who carries this burden. One of the best ways I've seen this done is in the 2013 Royal Opera House production, where Onegin is led during the Polonaise on a dance through a constant progression of women that gradually wears him down with the passing of the years. It leaves him in the perfect state to have his eyes opened to the opportunities of real love and stability in his life that have been lost. Interestingly, with an elderly Tatyana coming back to a dusty, decaying Larin mansion, once filled with life, Mears's direction makes you consider everything else that has been lost over time. For the first time really the Lensky's tragedy carried through for me, and I wondered what had become of Olga and the direction her life subsequently must have taken. Would Lensky's death have stayed with her or would the memory have faded with time and the other needs of life?

It's essential that, like Pushkin and Tchaikovsky, the reader or listener identify with the characters in the story and see their lives in that kind of context; Onegin as tragedy plus time. By casting the net of time further - Herheim's production certainly does this, and so too does Kasper Holten's doubling of the older Tatyana and Onegin looking back on their younger counterparts - Oliver Mears captures that sense of the work not so much as an encyclopaedia of Russian life, but just an encyclopaedia of life. There are many perspectives you can place on Eugene Onegin, but the most important one is what the individual listener and spectator brings to it; and the passing of time, the changes it brings and the regrets that still sting are something that everyone can relate to.

That's not to say that the viewer has to do all the work. Far from it. While the perspective Oliver Mears introduces sets the work in a wider context, Stuart Stratford and the Scottish Opera Orchestra permit the listener to feel the heat of life and the complexity of sentiments associated with it in every note of Tchaikovsky's beautiful melodies and dances. The singing and characterisation are critical however, particularly for Tatyana and Onegin, and the casting was nigh on perfect here. Natalya Romaniw was simply stunning. If she was a little blank and cool in her acting, frozen mortification works well for Tatyana, and all the yearning was there in a superbly sung performance. She had a perfect counterfoil in Samuel Dale Johnson's Onegin, initially aloof (making an entrance on a live horse!) and little by little falling prey to his own personality flaws. There were certainly no flaws in his singing. The quality of singing and characterisation of Olga and Lensky by Sioned Gwen Davies and Peter Auty was evident in how much you cared about their fates.

Eugene Onegin can sometimes risk being a little aloof and cool in its mannerisms of detachment if the music and singing aren't all perfectly aligned to bring out the true sentiments. That necessarily goes beyond the principals, the larger picture of life and the impact of time extending to the supporting characters, from Madame Larina and the nurse Filippyevna's views and life experiences, to Prince Gremin's reflections on married life and love later in life. The chorus, the dancers, also all contribute to the sense of life viewed comprehensively in all its richness, but with an underlying melancholy for the impact of that time exerts on it. Everything that is great about Eugene Onegin comes together perfectly in this Scottish Opera production.

Links: Scottish Opera

Puccini - Madama Butterfly (Scottish Opera 2014 - Belfast)

Giacomo Puccini - Madama Butterfly

Scottish Opera, Belfast 2014

Marco Guidarini, David McVicar, Elaine Kidd, Hye-Youn Lee, Louise Collett, José Ferrero, Marcin Bronikowski, Adrian Thompson, Jonathan May, Catrin Aur, Andrew McTaggart

Grand Opera House, Belfast - 21 June 2014

Revived in 2014, David McVicar's 2000 production of Madama Butterfly for the Scottish Opera proves to be a sensitive working of Puccini's opera. It's perhaps not quite as daring or radical as some of McVicar's later opera interpretations, retaining many of the familiar elements that an audience would expect to see in Madama Butterfly, but there are enough little touches to show that there's been serious attention given to the work and indeed to how it works.

The first thing you notice about the set for Scottish Opera's production is that while you have the familiar low-lying platform and screens for a Japanese house, the set is slightly askew in perspective. What this suggests is obvious, but it's emphasised by the sepia toned quality of the colouring, the deep colouration and the cut of the costumes set against them. This is not a kitsch stylised Madama Butterfly, or one that suggests nostalgia for a period and goes through the motions of playing out the melodrama, but one rather that is striving for a sense of realism for the sensibility of the period, as well viewing it from the perspective of those involved.

Careful attention to Puccini's score does indeed suggest that this approach is validated by the music itself and that it's not as syrupy, sentimental and manipulative as it is reputed. Madama Butterfly is certainly romantic but it's not romanticised; it still has those verismo characteristics in how it follows through realistically on the harsh consequences of such heightened melodrama. McVicar's direction doesn't need any little tricks to manipulate the power of the score itself, choosing rather to introduce a few little "delayed impact" touches that draw back from any heavy-handedness. The director for example tips the hand early in Act II to let the audience know before the traditional revelation that Cio-Cio San has had a child in Pinkerton's absence. The finale too is more sensitive than usual - yes it can be done with sensitivity - with the falling of the knife in her death scene not striking on the note but just before it, letting the actual impact of her death rather than the act itself have the final say.

A similar sense of sensitivity is there throughout. I've seen ballet dancers introduced into Madama Butterfly before (Sferisterio 2009), for example, but I've never realised how ballet-like Puccini's score is in its storytelling. There's no actual dancing in this production, but there are telling little touches that show that the director (or revival director) is actually listening to the score and taking dramatic, emotional and movement cues from the music. Discovering that Butterfly is fifteen, Sharpless observes, "The age for playing" ('L'età dei giuochi'), while Pinkerton boldly claims (in this translation), "Old enough for a wedding dress" ('E dei confetti'). Here the moment is marked with a little skip and twirl of Butterfly in Pinkerton's arms that gives a sense of both the youth of the girl and the romance of the sentiment.

This could have been played as sleazy, but that's judging it by today's standards and not with a sense for the period place or the time. It doesn't make it right of course, but the director knows that this will be borne out by later events and it doesn't need any directorial input to tell the audience how they ought to feel. The twirl is indeed picked up later, an echo of that moment of romance, but with subtle darkening of tone. Joseph Kerman ('Music as Drama') might disagree, but Puccini is a master of using music and melody to tell stories - he just might not do it according to "rules". I admit that it bothers me that the composer uses the same music or hints at the Humming Chorus in an earlier scene where Sharpless delivers Pinkerton's letter when there's really nothing that justifies connecting these two moments. (Don't even ask who is supposed to be singing the Humming Chorus!). It's hardly the correct employment of Wagnerian leitmotif, but Puccini has a wonderful ability to use the same music with subtle variations to tell us different things and make it work.

The strength of the direction here is that it trusts Puccini's music to be strong enough to tell the story in its own way and determine the precise tone. Marco Guidarini's sensitive conducting of the Scottish Opera orchestra does much to achieve that also, and the singing isn't bad either. From the first moment she walks onto the stage it's clear that Hye-Youn Lee is going to be an outstanding Cio-Cio San. Her voice rings high, her control is marvellous, and her characterisation as a young innocent girl is utterly credible in her acting performance as well as in the careful tone, delivery and timbre of her voice. Butterfly needs to be dazzling without seeming to be too commanding or experienced beyond her years, and Hye-Youn Lee gets that absolutely right.

José Ferrero is a little bit harsh on first appearance as Pinkerton, particularly in his scenes with Marcin Bronikowski's fine performance as the US Consul Sharpless, but he settles into the role very well when playing against Lee's Butterfly. With revival director Elaine Kidd behind McVicar's solid and perfectly attuned production and strong performances from the orchestra and singers, Scottish Opera's Madama Butterfly is a perfect demonstration of why this particular work remains one of the greatest and most popular works of lyric stage. When it's performed right, Madama Butterfly is simply as good as dramatic opera gets.

Mozart - The Magic Flute

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - The Magic Flute

Scottish Opera, 2012

Ekhart Wycik, Sir Thomas Allen, Nicky Spence, Claire Watkins, Rachel Hynes, Louise Collett, Richard Burkhard, Mari Moriya, Laura Mitchell, Jonathan Best, Peter Van Hulle

Grand Opera House, Belfast - 1 December 2012

If you want to, you can consider The Magic Flute to be a complex work, and with all the qualities that make up the complex personality and musicianship of Mozart placed within it, it most certainly is a work of incredible richness and variety.  Written however with Emanuel Schikaneder as a popular Singspiel, what Die Zauberflöte should be above all else however is witty, charming, funny and entertaining.  It has a serious side of course, and a meaningful message to put across - and it does get a little bogged down in solemnity on occasion - but it's the means by which those ideas are put across that is essential to the brilliance of the work.  Comedy, in The Magic Flute, proves to be a much more effective means of getting that across.  And music - but I'll come to that as well.

The light-hearted side of Mozart in Die Zauberflöte can often be undervalued and underrepresented, but the Scottish Opera's production - seen here in Belfast at the end of the tour on 1st December - gets the balance just about right.  That's a tricky balance to maintain in this work.  How, for example, do you account for all the mysticism, the Masonic initiation rituals and grand solemn ceremonies that undoubtedly underpin most of the enlightened ideals that make up the fabric of The Magic Flute, while at the same time making it accessible and entertaining to a modern audience?  How do you reconcile the Tamino and the Papageno?  Mozart does the hard bit through his remarkable music, showing love to be the most ennobling and life-affirming act that any human being is capable of, but finding a way to make that work in a setting that accounts for all the trappings of the Masonic rituals is a more difficult prospect for a modern production.

Directing for the Scottish Opera, Sir Thomas Allen's idea isn't a bad one, setting the story up as a kind of fairground show in a Victorian "Steampunk" setting with gentlemen in stovepipe hats, operating pulleys and clockwork mechanical constructions.  Visually it's a delight, creating the right kind of 'magical' background that accounts for freaks and animals, smoke and mirrors, but the steam engineering also feels utterly appropriate to the idea of human ingenuity, progress and man's ceaseless endeavours to better himself.  It doesn't go all the way to differentiate and clarify the natures of the opposing forces of the Queen of the Night and Sarastro, or establish where dragon slaying fits into the picture, but it's more important to provide a suitably "fun" setting that better engages the audience and allows the story to flow in a relatively consistent manner.

And who better to engage with the audience than Papageno?  Well, the Scottish Opera played an interesting trick in making Tamino a regular member of the audience also, picked out sitting in the Circle by a spotlight during the overture and invited to join in the fun on the stage.  Tamino can be a little too earnest a figure to entirely identify with, so some pantomime-style banter with the audience on the part of both Tamino and Papageno - and engaging performances from Nicky Spence and Richard Burkhard - helped break down those barriers between the characters and the audience, which is really what The Magic Flute is all about.  It's about showing what noble sentiments and actions any man is capable of, whether Prince or fool.  Or indeed woman.

Much scorn is poured upon womankind in The Magic Flute, no doubt in line with Masonic tradition - but Mozart's truly enlightened attitude (and I'm sure his love for women) shows that they also have an important part in directing the progress of all mankind on to better things.  If there's any doubt about the work's intentions towards women, one need only listen to the remarkable music that Mozart scores for the female figures.  The masculine characteristics are straight, direct and measured in both their nobility and, in the case of Papageno, playfulness, but the women bring a wildness, an unpredictability and a sense of abandon - most notably in the case of the Queen of the Night's coloratura and range, but also in the sentiments that plunge Pamina from the heights of love to the depths of despair within the span of minutes, a descent that was handled well in this performance by Laura Mitchell.

All of this is part of what The Magic Flute is about, so in addition to making it look engaging and entertaining, it needs to musically take you on this journey, and on all accounts the Scottish Opera's production was sympathetic to the rhythms and moods of the piece.  There were a few curious lapses in tempo that, for example, drained the intensity both from the Queen of the Night's entrance and from Sarastro's grave pronouncements.  If they were to give the performer's room to approach the demands of their ranges, it may have been necessary, but Mari Moriya and Jonathan Best didn't seem to have too many problems in these tricky roles.  All of the main performers then managed to strike that balance exceptionally well, matching the tone and sentiments of Mozart's writing, and they were well supported by the rest of the cast, with a strong trio in the three Ladies, but also the exceptionally beautiful harmonies produced by the three Boys for this performance.

If there were any minor concerns about the limitations of the fairground setting or in the singers meeting the exceptionally high standards of the work's vocal demands, it's more the spirit and the heart of Mozart's music that is essential to getting the wonder of The Magic Flute across, and the Scottish Opera's heart was in the right place here.

Offenbach - Orpheus in the Underworld

Jacques Offenbach - Orpheus in the Underworld

NI Opera & Scottish Opera, 2011

Derek Clark, Oliver Mears, Rory Bremner, Nicholas Sherratt, Jane Harrington, Máire Flavin, Ross McInroy, Brendan Collins, Daire Halpin, Gavin Ring, Maire Claire Breen, Olivia Ray, Christopher Diffey

Theatre at the Mill, Newtownabbey, 31 October 2011

Written in 1858, Offenbach’s first full-length comic operetta was by no means intended to be merely just a retelling of the classic Greek myth, not indeed even just a satire on the use of the subject in so many operas, but it was also intended to be a satire of the times. Who better then to take on the necessary task of updating it for our own times (it’s hardly going to be meaningful to parody 19th century Parisian society), while retaining all the risqué humour and the political edge than impressionist comedian and satirist Rory Bremner for this joint production between Scottish Opera and Northern Ireland Opera of Orpheus in the Underworld (’Orphée aux enfers’).

You might think that celebrity marriages, society scandal and gossip were only a recent phenomenon introduced by tabloid newspapers and the publication of ‘Hello’ and ‘OK’, but no, it was clearly as much a subject of interest in Offenbach’s time as it doubtless was long before that, and a subject just as worthy of sending up. Here, Eurydice is enjoying life as a WAG, her husband the celebrity musician Orpheus (although she has a severe allergic reaction to his music), and Bremner’s witty working of the libretto captures all the glamour as well as the vacuousness of the celebrity lifestyle. Even though both Eurydice and Orpheus can’t stand each other any longer and are cheating on each other, they are concerned about Public Opinion (a character in the opera), and about what a divorce would do to their reputations.

Unfortunately, Eurydice’s gym instructor with whom she is having an affair is not Aristaeus, as she believes, but Pluto, the God of the Underworld in disguise. The collusion between Pluto and Orpheus isn’t really brought out in this production, but in any case the end result is the same – an unfortunate “accident” that kills Eurydice, allowing Pluto to whisk her off to Hell. Public Opinion is not impressed, although Orpheus doesn’t seem too concerned, and she insists that he set matters right and appeal to the Gods on Olympus. They’re a decadent bunch but rather fed-up with the high-life and the meaningless little affairs that they’ve been carrying on, so the idea of slumming it in Hell on a rescue mission to recover Eurydice sounds like fun to them. Apollo, who can’t keep it in his pants, as we all know, also sees the chance of upstaging an old rival by stealing Eurydice for himself right from under Pluto’s nose and on his own turf.

Off they go, partying in the Underworld, dancing the Can-Can (the famous music of the Moulin Rouge indeed originating from this Offenbach operetta), to such lively arrangements, sordid liaisons and bitter rivalry, that Orpheus in the Underworld has all the ingredients for a classic opera plot, if it’s not exactly the way the classical subject is more often played out. Not least of the imaginative arrangements in this humorous treatment is Apollo, disguised as a giant fly, getting it on in a vibrating buzzing way with Eurydice. Perhaps surprisingly, such racy material and irreverence is all there in Offenbach’s original work, and – without wishing to take anything away from Bremner’s often funny and cleverly rhyming English update – it only takes a tweak or two to spice it up with some modern pop-culture references (and some local topical ones, depending on the venue).

Still, that’s making it all sound a little easier than it really is. In order to carry off this kind of comic opera, you not only need good performers who can act as well as sing, but they also need to have a good sense of comic timing and rapport with each other. If you have that – and there’s no doubt that this was certainly the case in this production – when combined with the zippy, witty and dazzling arrangements from Offenbach that belie the apparent lightness of the material, you have a winning combination. Surprisingly, Orpheus isn’t one of the major characters in the opera, but Nicholas Sherratt worked well alongside Jane Harrington’s terrific characterisation of Eurydice (by way perhaps of Katie Price and Victoria Beckham). Handling the comedy acting and the singing parts with equal aplomb, she was a delight whenever she was on the stage. The meatier roles however were given over to Brendan Collins and Gavin Ring as Apollo and Pluto, who both managed to strike the right tone throughout, as well as carry off the more outrageous moments of comic interplay. The all-important satirical sense of moral outrage mixed with salacious prying and interference was brilliantly brought out in Máire Flavin’s schoolmarmish Public Opinion, but all the cast fully entered into the spirit of the piece.

Conducted by Derek Clark, the chamber arrangement played by the NI Opera Orchestra worked perfectly with the intimacy of the venue at Newtownabbey’s Theatre at the Mill, but with appropriate zest and timing that fully supported the outrageous on-stage activities. Following the Northern Ireland tour, the production travels to the Young Vic in London for a number of dates between the 1st and 10th December and this is one show that is well worth catching if you can-can.

Verdi - Rigoletto

Giuseppe Verdi - Rigoletto

Scottish Opera

Tobias Ringborg, Matthew Richardson, Eddie Wade, Nadine Livingston, Edgaras Montvidas, Jonathan May, Louise Collett

Grand Opera House, Belfast - June 16, 2011

It’s hard to imagine how Verdi’s choice of Victor Hugo’s drama ‘Le Roi s’amuse’ could have caused such a stir in 1850 when it was used as the basis for his opera Rigoletto, but censorship problems would dog the composer all through his early career, partly due to the revolutionary political content of his work, but also partly due to Verdi’s headstrong challenging of authority for most of his life. One can understand to some extent that, even with the arbitrary nature of censorship that would depend on where the opera was being first performed (Verdi famously would subsequently withdraw Un ballo in maschera from Naples and take it to Rome after already being forced to make sweeping changes to its original incarnation as Gustavo III) , that the authorities wouldn’t look too kindly upon the subject of a libertine king being involved in scandalous affairs with the wives of his courtiers and being subject to a death plot, but there are other shocking events introduced to the opera stage in Rigoletto by Verdi that we take almost for granted nowadays.  A good production of this opera however should ensure that it still has an impact today.

In the end, Verdi was forced to relocate Rigoletto away from the behaviour of royalty in post-revolutionary France to Mantua in Italy, but surprisingly, he was still able to make an obvious allusion to the notoriety of Vincenzo Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua. While Verdi might not have got away with depicting a libertine king consorting with prostitutes, a Duke indulging in that kind of behaviour on a stage was scarcely less shocking, but no more so that the fact that Verdi, who would be a great revolutionary in giving common people a voice on the opera stage, would depict anyone at all taking part in the rather sordid lowlife dealings that occur over the course of the opera’s intensely dramatic three acts. This was just not the sort of behaviour that one expected to see in an opera.

In my recent review of Macbeth, I mentioned how Verdi loved to mix political fire with the oil of relationship melodrama in his early works – Un ballo in maschera is another stormy later example of this style – but occasionally, the forumula changes in interesting ways, with Stiffelio for example combining a pot-boiling infidelity melodrama with religious rather than a political conviction and sense of duty. Rigoletto is also fascinating for its variation on a theme, where the central relationship under threat is not a romantic one (although it does have a romantic aspect), but the relationship between a father and his daughter. What is just as intriguing about the father-daughter relationship in Rigoletto is that it is not idealised, and the flawed character of Rigoletto can be seen as being fatally over-protective of his daughter, Gilda. When there is a libertine like the Duke of Mantua running around, whose reputation Rigoletto knows well as his court jester and co-conspirator, one can understand his concerns for the daughter that the brute of a man with many enemies has – and they prove to be well-founded – but the downside is that his over-protectiveness leads Gilda to react and assert her freedom of choice in a rather dramatic and tragic way.



All of this adds spice to the characterisation, for while Rigoletto is certainly a blood-and-thunder Verdi melodrama (quite literally with the third-act bloodletting taking place during a thunderstorm), the composer does overturn some of the usual conventions. If Rigoletto is the standard clown, whose joking hides a sensitive disposition and whose ugliness of his deformity disguises the beauty of his love for his daughter, it’s his jealousy, his pride and his superstition (Verdi reminding us regularly of the curse that has been placed on him by Count Monterone for his complicity in the Duke’s crimes), that end up distorting the genuine love he has for his daughter. On the other hand, the villain of the piece, the Duke, manages through the privilege of his position and his handsomeness, as well as a carefree attitude, to get away with his infidelity and his use of people for his own pleasures. Rather than predictably show that all men are equal, Rigoletto emphasises rather the social inequalities that persist and how their weaknesses can be exploited by the less scrupulous – seen here in the form of the assassin, Sparafucile.

Whether these considerations really make Rigoletto anything more than a melodramatic potboiler is however difficult to justify, and indeed there’s little in Verdi’s score to suggest any greater subtleties. As a pure example of the Verdi style however, it’s a remarkably effective and superbly structured musical drama. Although it is principally concerned with introducing the characters, showing their temperaments and setting up the drama that is to later unfold, Act 1 does so most efficiently and has some fine musical moments and arias that are to reverberate through the remainder of the opera. Scottish Opera’s staging likewise tried to make this efficient as possible, viewing it not in period costume or set in Mantua (with the Marco Bellochio’s 2010 live telecast from Mantua still fresh in the mind, it could hardly compete with the real-life locations), but more like an old-fashioned cabaret or variety show, with Rigoletto in tights and pottering across the stage like Max Wall. With traditional backdrop stage-curtains and doors, chorus-line dancers and glitterballs, it set the tone well in this respect, but, like Verdi’s composition, the real test of the opera is in the second and third acts.



The pivotal second act, made up of a series of stunning arias and duets, determines not only whether the singers are up to the challenge, but also whether the production is able to make it work in dramatic terms. It would be hard to get it so wrong that the drama doesn’t work – Verdi’s score is lean and strong enough on its own terms and the action well choreographed to pull it through – but thankfully, the quality of the singing and acting in Scottish Opera’s production was also up to the task. The three principal roles are all challenging, but vital, and they all need to work in common accord. Rigoletto’s lyrical baritone should ensure that it is anything but a buffone role, and Eddie Wade managed to convey the contradiction and confusion in the character’s make-up through his acting and through his fine singing performance of the role. Edgaras Montvidas came across as a little cocky and self-satisfied in his delivery as the Duke, but that’s how he ought to be. There’s a little room for early ambiguity which might not quite have been caught in his relationship with Gilda, since he has to be persuasive enough for her to trust him and fall in love with him, but elsewhere, and particularly in the famous third act aria La donna è mobile, the tone and the quality of the singing were excellent. It’s Gilda however that the opera ultimately rests upon, and although a little inexperienced, that innocent quality stood Nadine Livingston in good stead, making her predicament and fate genuinely touching and almost credible (there are limits to how convincing the denouement can be dramatically).

While it was harder to relate the relevance of the staging – an open room with a leather sofa and a glitterball littered with parts of showroom dummies in Act 2, a tilted-box representation of the inn in Act 3 – to any overall theme or concept, the choreography was fine and didn’t work against the drama. Combined with the strong singing and Verdi’s powerful score, this production hit all the right notes in all the right places, the darkness of the operas themes and its daring treatment still powerful enough for a modern day audience to in some way understand why it caused such a sensation over 150 years ago.