Empire Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 9 June 2011

FOR those inclined to statistics it will come as no surprise that Verdi’s Rigoletto ranks at number ten in the list of most popular operas of all time. With a treasury of memorable music, a trio of magnetic characters and a plot buzzing with tension from start to finish, it is no wonder that nearly every opera company has a production of this masterpiece in its repertoire.

Not that Verdi and his librettist Piave had it all their own way as they transposed Victor Hugo’s play Le roi s’amuse into an opera. Hugo’s work was banned by the censors in France for nearly half a century as it was considered insulting to the monarchy in the Restoration period to portray a king as an immoral and cynical womaniser.

Eddie Wade and Nadine Livingston (photo Richard Campbell)

However, after some negotiations with the Austrian Board of Censors, who controlled much of northern Italy in the mid-19th century, resulting in the King becoming a fictitious duke and the character of the title changing from a king to the court jester with a name derived from the French rigolo meaning “funny”, Rigoletto received its first performance at La Fenice in Venice in 1851 and was an instant success.

For this new production, Scottish Opera brought in the director Matthew Richardson to make his debut with the company, working alongside designer Jon Morell and lighting designer Tony Rabbit. They chose to bring the action forward some four hundred years to the mid-20eth century and that immediately begs the question as to whether human behaviour can be portrayed as the same in the 1950s as it was in the 1550s?

Bring it forward another fifty years into our celebrity obsessed society, would the tabloid press accept the hedonistic activities of a dissolute aristocrat (or maybe that should be the alleged behaviour of an unnamed premiership footballer)?

Nobody could argue that the sets were in the verissimo style. Much was left to the imagination, whether it was in a curtain wall containing a row of doors, each one revealing another of the Duke’s conquests, or the small box-like space which was home to Gilda, the jester’s daughter. Without doubt there was a shortage of visual distractions that might steal anything away from the music and the singing. Or were the broken mannequins in the ducal apartment meant to symbolise his sexual cast-offs? And were the strange carnivalesque masks worn by the chorus of cuckolded husbands giving an acknowledgement to the Venice Carnival and the site of the first production?

The title role of Rigoletto is a huge part with scarcely a moment when the character is off the stage. It was an inspired choice to cast the English baritone Eddie Wade in the role. He struck a perfect blend of self-hate, cynicism and, in today’s climate, over-protective paternal love. His rich, powerful baritone voice conveyed not just the mocking arrogance of one who knows he enjoys his master’s patronage, but also the tenderness of a caring parent and the anguish of one who finds he has been outwitted both by the targets of his derision and ultimately by his own daughter.

Scottish Opera’s Emerging Artist Programme has nurtured an absolute star in soprano Nadine Livingston who, before this monumental role as Gilda, had been seen as Susannah in The Marriage of Figaro, as Musetta in La Bohème and in the title role in Katya Kabanova. Perhaps having her dressed in a schoolgirl smock and short white socks made her adolescent love for the Duke and her ultimate sacrifice all the more shocking, but the sheer quality of her voice, from when she spotted all those high notes in ‘Caro nome’ to the tender pathos of her final utterings, was exquisite.

The third member of the trio, and the anti-hero, is the tenor. And as the tenor he gets all the best songs, ‘Questa quellar’ or ‘La donna e mobile’, the songs that are hummed and whistled in the streets for days afterwards. Lithuanian Edgaras Montvidas is making quite a reputation for himself both as a singer and, on stage, as a lothario in the role of the Duke of Mantua, after one thing and one thing only, and it mattered to him not a jot upon whom he trampled during his lustful quests. Unsurprisingly, it is the Duke who comes away at the end untouched and unharmed by all the emotional carnage he has caused.

No matter how well the leading characters perform, and how excellent the support they get from the lesser roles such as the various courtiers and the killer Sparafucile and his sister Maddelena, the real star of this opera is the music. So many arias and duets from Rigoletto have become household favourites and the glorious quartet in the final act between the Duke, Maddelena, Gilda and Rigoletto is one of the most sublime passages in all opera.

Down in the pit, the Orchestra of Scottish Opera was in superb voice, with the inspiring Swedish conductor Tobias Ringborg keeping the whole work together from memory and without the use of a score in front of him.

Overall, the singing, the acting and the music from the orchestra were flawless. It’s a shame that the sets and the designs were not of the same supreme quality. Nobody wants opera to survive in a time warp, but anachronistic productions tend to be unconvincing.

© James Munro, 2011

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