Word: rigoletto
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...much in time and money to prepare it as five ordinary Verdi or Puccini operas, but would draw crowds for only about ten performances as compared with 30-odd for the Italian favorites. This year the Met is enjoying full houses (at about $19,000 a night) for its Rigoletto and La Boheme, while, even with Soprano Harshaw, performances of Tann-häuser and Walkure find about 10% of the seats empty...
Last-minute substitutions are something of a specialty with Roberta. She made her Met debut as a fillin, Zerlina in Don Giovanni, three years ago. Since then she has answered several other fire calls, including two for Gilda in Rigoletto (for Hilde Gueden and Genevieve Warner), one for Adele in Fledermaus (for Virginia MacWatters). But Soprano Peters is more than a high-class fireman...
Nevertheless, the rehearsals went well. "The orchestra and I leaned the opera together," he says. Opera authorities gave him every break, canceled a conflicting rehearsal of Rigoletto to give him more time. A few hours before his curtain last week, Lennie was gripped by sinusitis, but La Scala medicos fussed over him, and the 35-year-old maestro apparently thrived on their treatment...
With her sure voice and mounting experience, Soprano Dobbs is ready for almost any coloratura role that may come her way. Most of the eight she already knows (e.g., Gilda in Rigoletto; Olympia in Tales of Hoffmann) call for light-skinned singers, but she has no objection to wearing light makeup. "If white singers make up to play Aida or Otello," she says, "why shouldn't Negroes be able to make up for roles like Lucia di Lammermoor...
Metropolitan Opera (Sat. 2 p.m., ABC). Rigoletto, with Warren, Gueden, Conley...