Word: rigoletto
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...Lulu, they justify the Met's often advertised suggestion that to buy one of its tickets is to "strike a blow for civilization." When Levine and Dexter miss, they raise worries about the wisdom of dual artistic control. Last week's new production of Verdi's Rigoletto was about as splendid musically as it could be. Yet the onstage events ate at the very heart of the work, robbing it of too much essential contrast and believability...
...this Rigoletto's failings, Dexter must bear most of the blame. Yet Levine, despite the beauty and power of his conducting, cannot be totally absolved. It is the peculiar penchant of both to want to concentrate as much action as possible at the front of the stage. In Dexter's case the practice seems to have developed during a brilliant career on the legitimate stages of Broadway and London's West End. For Levine it seems to be a case of wanting to bring the singers closer to both the audience and his own podium. They...
...unit set can be a house or room or a neo-Bayreuthring that rotates on its axis to create changes of scene. The new Rigoletto (cost: close to $300,000, neither cheap nor extravagant) is built around a leaning tower that suggests not so much Pisa but Babel and, at times, the land of Hansel and Gretel. At the start it represents the palace of the Duke of Mantua. For the second scene it becomes the house where the jester Rigoletto has hidden, or so he thinks, his daughter Gilda from a menacing outside world. And so on. The tower...
...years, one of them, Esclarmonde, has just made its Metropolitan Opera debut as a vehicle for Joan Sutherland. The title character is a Byzantine Empress with magical powers, and after hearing the music, one can only wish that she had used her sorcery to summon up a different show-Rigoletto, maybe...
...performing-arts company in the South is incontestably the Houston Grand Opera (TIME, July 19). In his four-year reign, young General Director David Gockley, 33, has turned the company into one of the seven best in the U.S. The forthcoming season opens with Rigoletto (Oct. 15) but includes such attractions as Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes (Jan. 28) and Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea (March 25). Gockley's innovations include the creation of the touring Texas Opera Theater, which has successfully made a home in Texas and five nearby states; next month, for instance, Sousa...