ENO Rigoletto - I would have gone for Quinn Kelsey alone ! .Claire Seymour reviews the new ENO Rigoletto at the Coliseum HERE in Opera Today.
"Overall, a major problem was that despite the tense and visceral musical fabric drawn from the orchestra by conductor Graeme Jenkins, the dramatic momentum was weak. Too often Rigoletto was to be found asleep in the chair and the scene changes were clunky. Thus, there was a noticeable hiatus between the two scenes of Act 1: we stared at gauzy black curtain while furniture was shifted noisily shifted beyond. Moreover, too often innermost conversations were presented in a dislocated manner. For example, when Gilda and Rigoletto conversed earnestly and intimately they were placed at opposing extremes of the fore-stage, facing the audience. If they cannot connect with each other, how can we emphasise with their tragedy? "
"In Verdi’s score, after the conventional operatic ‘last breaths’, Gilda is granted a conventional ‘resurrection’: the nineteenth-century heroine’s standard final words of forgiveness and self-condemnation. Verdi’s opera must close with Rigoletto’s wild cry of grief and despair: ‘The curse is fulfilled.’ But, Alden’s Gilda rises like an angel and floats towards a glaring light, presumably to join her mother in the afterlife. Alden declares that Rigoletto is an ‘incendiary work’; but, here he unequivocally quenches the fire. The cold brightness that illuminates Gilda’s final steps ‘blinds’ us - the black veil that has separated us from the action has smothered the flame of sympathy too."
"Overall, a major problem was that despite the tense and visceral musical fabric drawn from the orchestra by conductor Graeme Jenkins, the dramatic momentum was weak. Too often Rigoletto was to be found asleep in the chair and the scene changes were clunky. Thus, there was a noticeable hiatus between the two scenes of Act 1: we stared at gauzy black curtain while furniture was shifted noisily shifted beyond. Moreover, too often innermost conversations were presented in a dislocated manner. For example, when Gilda and Rigoletto conversed earnestly and intimately they were placed at opposing extremes of the fore-stage, facing the audience. If they cannot connect with each other, how can we emphasise with their tragedy? "
"In Verdi’s score, after the conventional operatic ‘last breaths’, Gilda is granted a conventional ‘resurrection’: the nineteenth-century heroine’s standard final words of forgiveness and self-condemnation. Verdi’s opera must close with Rigoletto’s wild cry of grief and despair: ‘The curse is fulfilled.’ But, Alden’s Gilda rises like an angel and floats towards a glaring light, presumably to join her mother in the afterlife. Alden declares that Rigoletto is an ‘incendiary work’; but, here he unequivocally quenches the fire. The cold brightness that illuminates Gilda’s final steps ‘blinds’ us - the black veil that has separated us from the action has smothered the flame of sympathy too."
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