Rigoletto: Bitterness a fatal flaw

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This was published 9 years ago

Rigoletto: Bitterness a fatal flaw

In a novel, almost radical move, Rigoletto returns to its decadent origins.

By Linda Morris

Warwick Fyfe has come out of rehearsals feeling as if he has been run over by a truck.

From a pure vocal aspect, Rigoletto is more demanding and complex than Giuseppe Verdi's other great role for a dramatic baritone, Falstaff.

Warwick Fyfe as <i>Rigoletto</i>. The costume was inspired by a Flemish painting, <i>The Laughing Fool</i>.

Warwick Fyfe as Rigoletto. The costume was inspired by a Flemish painting, The Laughing Fool.Credit: Angela Wylie

''What makes you sweat half your body weight away doing it,'' says Fyfe physically flagging, ''is the emotional intensity of it.

''When I hear young baritones speaking airily of how they see Rigoletto as a role they will do one day, I'm sort of thinking, 'You have no idea!' Doing the arias is not doing the role in any conceivable shape or form. The role as a whole is elephantine in its demands.

''There are roles where the singing goes on for longer, there are many roles that are much more intellectually demanding than Rigoletto, where there is much harder music and you're struggling to pitch the notes, but in terms of physical and emotional demands this one will remain the hardest role I do.''

Only moments before, Fyfe was wretched, clutching the prone body of Gilda to his chest, inhabiting the role of a hunchback jester whose attempt to avenge the kidnapping and rape of his daughter leads to her death.

''Ah, the curse,'' he sings with anguish and, as the final notes ricochet off the sound boards, the chorus joins conductor Renato Palumbo, director Roger Hodgman and other spellbound observers in spontaneous applause.

This is Opera Australia's first new production of Rigoletto since 1991 and, in a novel, even radical turn of events, Hodgman takes Verdi's masterpiece back to the original court of the power-hungry Duke of Mantua.

Verdi's decadent opera is based on Victor Hugo's play, Le Roi s'amuse (The King Amuses Himself), which centres on corruption and scandal in the court of the licentious French monarch Francis I and was banned after its first performance for perceived slights to King Louis-Philippe. To dodge the censors, Verdi translated the work to the fabled court of a womanising noble in Renaissance Italy, and it proved the hit of its day.

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The day after Rigoletto's opening in Venice in 1851, gondoliers were reportedly singing the Duke's signature aria, the jaunty La Donna e mobile, in which the Duke characterises all women as fickle and forgettable.

The aristocratic lothario is wealthy, powerful and surrounded by fawning courtiers. His jester, a survivor of the court's feudal intrigues who disguises truth in jokes, fails to check the Duke's assaults, while at home he is fiercely protective of the reputation of his virginal only daughter, Gilda.

''He's got this deformity that has made him bitter,'' says Hodgman. ''He hates the world really, and the one thing he loves he destroys. He is flawed like any great tragic character and his flaw is his obsessiveness.''

With the opera's universal themes of power and corruption, Rigoletto has been set in the world of Silvio Berlusconi's Italy, among the Mafia in New York City's Little Italy during the 1950s, in a casino in 1960s Las Vegas and a Mayfair gentleman's club in 1860.

''It is true for the theatre as well as opera,'' says Hodgman, ''that a classic is a classic not only because it is well written and a good piece of literature or music, but because it still speaks to us and we recognise ourselves in the characters and situations.''

The gritty set design is the work of Richard Roberts, who worked with Hodgman, former artistic director of the Melbourne Theatre Company, on a production of Rigoletto 11 years ago. The production, for Oz Opera, Opera Australia's touring arm, travelled across Australia. It was Hodgman's first opera for the company and the pair had talked about how they would stage the opera on a much grander scale if they ever got the chance.

''We really didn't want it to be a museum production with lots of detail and period props, and people knowing how to bow and use swords, and a set full of naturalistic periodic detail,'' says Hodgman.

''It is very stark, very bold and it throws the focus, which is exactly what we wanted, on the performers, on the characters and the music, which is divine, without any distractions at all.''

The intimate and stylised set features two revolving platforms shifting scenes between the ducal palace, a dim alley and onto a deserted riverbank. The references to cobblestone and columns and extensive use of shadows accentuate the opera's emotional intensity and give the tragic turns of a romantic murder story a gruesome ''psychodrama quality'', says Hodgman.

As research, Palumbo urged the cast, which includes the Italian tenor Gianluca Terranova and Russian soprano Irina Dubrovskaya, to watch an Alfred Hitchock thriller.

''I come from a theatre background and I'm really interested in the emotional journey of the characters, and we've spent a lot of time in rehearsals discussing and exploring how characters feel,'' says Hodgman.

''The opening scene we've talked about as being like an end-of-year football club [party], with a few courtesans there to entertain the heartless men of the court. There are moments of great beauty and happiness in this production and the odd moment of comedy, but it's pretty tough. Gritty isn't a bad word for it.''

Replacing the Fellini-like Elijah Moshinsky version which has served Opera Australia for almost a quarter of a century, the period costumes, crafted in lush velvets and delicate gauze in different shades of blood red and crimson, were created from scratch. Red is evocative of the duke's lusty and loveless passions, his insatiable desires, of Rigoletto's tortured mind and later his murderous intent.

Creating Rigoletto's costume of jester's hat with donkey's ears, pants, jacket and gaiters, took 210 hours. Opera Australia's wardrobe department took as their inspiration the Flemish painting The Laughing Fool, attributed to Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen, and so too has Fyfe, who is seeking a look of rotting malevolence. He plans to add a ''few drops'' of Charles Dickens' obsequious fictional character Uriah Heep to bring Rigoletto to life.

''[Rigoletto] has a tenacious hold on life, but is battered by it nonetheless. He is like one of those caged animals that have lived to a colossal age and the scars are there for everyone to see.''

Rigoletto is at the State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne, until May 10. opera.org.au

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