[Met Performance] CID:298430



Rigoletto
Metropolitan Opera House, Tue, November 7, 1989




Rigoletto (649)
Giuseppe Verdi | Francesco Maria Piave
Rigoletto
Leo Nucci

Gilda
June Anderson

Duke of Mantua
Luciano Pavarotti

Maddalena
Birgitta Svend?n

Sparafucile
Sergei Koptchak

Monterone
Alan Held

Borsa
Richard Fracker

Marullo
Vernon Hartman

Count Ceprano
Richard Vernon

Countess Ceprano
Joyce Guyer

Giovanna
Sondra Kelly

Page
Constance Green

Guard
Mitchell Sendrowitz


Conductor
Marcello Panni







Review 1:

Leighton Kerner in the Village Voice

?Rigoletto,? which arrived in November and returns for three performances next month (broadcast February 24), has attractively romantic-realistic scenery by Zack Brown, in his Met debut after years of dressing up other American companies' stages. And its director is Otto Schenk, once a resourceful freshener of classics but more recently (the Met's current ?Ring? in particular) a traffic cop who only occasionally remembers he's an actor himself and can draw strong histrionics from all sorts of singers. In ?Rigoletto,? he almost turned Leo Nucci's attempt at Verdi's tragic jester into a nostalgic impersonation of George Arliss. Nucci, to give him credit, sang decently, but his baritone lacks the grandeur and dramatic force the role demands.

June Anderson's Gilda was a widely overpraised Met debut. She's a beautiful woman and moves well. But her soprano is monotonous and, when I heard her on the production's second night ? spread chronically out of focus, although not off the pitch. The second half of "Caro nome," however was indeed lovely, with a genuine trill instead of the futile vibrato too many undertrained singers resort to on the world's major stages. Her adherence to the written, middle-range pitches near the end of the aria was the only perceptible evidence that the Met was living up to its claim of using the University of Chicago Press-Ricordi critical edition. That edition's most conspicuous discoveries ? the long double cadenza in the Gilda-Duke duet, the melodic change in "Cortigiani," and the Duke's demand to Sparafucile for not the familiarly printed "a room and some wine" but "your sister and some wine." I don't know whether this had anything to do with the casting of Luciano Pavarotti as the Duke, but I should have not thought so.

Pavarotti's well-publicized sciatica didn't keep him from singing elegantly and meaningfully. His three arias were musical and macho, and he went after Countess Ceprano and Maddalena with all but steaming nostrils. To Gilda he was better behaved. But his performance never seemed integrated by Schenk into a vital interpretation of the opera, and Marcello Panni's conducting was no more than efficient accompaniment.



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