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Giuseppe Verdi's "Rigoletto," with Robert Merrill interpreting the name role for the first time, was Saturday night's feature at the Metropolitan Opera House. The remainder of the cast included Roberta Peters as Gilda, Ferruccio Tagliavini as the Duke, Jerome Hines as Sparafucile, Jean Madeira as Maddalena and Thelma Votipka, Norman Scott and Lawrence Davidson.

Mr. Merrill, in the future, is quite likely to make Rigoletto one of his outstanding roles. He has the voice for it - a ringing baritone which sounds now bigger than it has on previous occasions, and his acting capacities are flexible enough to allow for considerable advance in the matter of characterization. At the present, however, Mr. Merrill has barely touched on the wealth of shading available to any and all Rigoletto singers.

As he sees Verdi's hunchback the character is at first the mocker, then the mocked, and this is proper and correct. But in neither phase of this activity is the baritone now able to produce a really vivid impression. As the Duke's companion and aid in crimes of seduction he is content to leer, and when his own daughter is dishonored he is satisfied to stagger and lurch, roll his eyes and act, indeed, as all misguided opera creatures do. But to Rigoletto there is a great deal more, for Verdi has underlined his character's change of heart with an equivalent change of melodic style, and without lighting upon this change and intensifying it by vocal means, Rigoletto is neither more nor less than a clown buffeted in turn by the librettist the composer and the fates.

Mr. Merrill is not as yet aware of this. He sang the second act duet, in which he extols his love for his deceased wife, with precisely the same fervor as his fourth act air to his dying daughter. And in between he did not account for the march of events that turns him from the hunter into the hunted. But it is, nonetheless, an impersonation in which the seeds of growth are deeply planted. Mr. Merrill is an artist, a fine one, and the mantle of Rigoletto, after all, does not fall form-fitted onto the shoulders. One must grow into it, and growth is a matter of time.

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