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Director: Andrea Bevilacqua
Conductor: Massimo Zanetti
Stars: Francesco Demuro, Leo Nucci, Nino Machaidze, Marco Spotti, Stefanie Irányi.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2812254/
16th Verdi opera.
Premiere 1851, Teatro La Fenice, Venice
Place: Mantua
Time: the sixteenth century
Filmed at Teatro Regio di Parma
This opera suffers from my having 2 really good versions, and having seen an "interesting" one via Met Opera on Demand. I really like the story, except for the targeting of Rigoletto's woman to punish Rigoletto. The woman is clearly not seen as a person. But the plot also characterizes her reaction as mixed, since she's "in love with" the Duke.
I don't find Nucci all that compelling as Rigoletto. He's not angry/anxious enough. But the audience loved him, and the father/daughter duet got an encore. She's a good bit of why they wanted more; her high note at the end is spectacular.
Demuro as the Duke was much less appreciated; he's not as strong a singer as might be expected of a role often performed by superstar tenors. He's young and handsome-ish, so his lechery seems more like sowing wild oats than debauchery, which helps the plot, since the Duke floats free of the havoc he wreaks. His charm/youth are what save his life; that's less easy to accept with an older Duke.
Costumes and sets are downright lavish for what I've seen of Parma in this series (and Parma is the most frequent venue by far.) I'm sure this opera is a money-maker, probably run often, so it makes sense to spend more on producing it. Colorful stuff.
Finally figured out who the suit taking bows was: the Chorus Master. Weird that he seems to take the credit for himself without throwing a lot of applause to the people onstage, as the Met chorus master does. He was missing IMDb credit for 9 of 22 titles in this box set, so I added them, and they went through very quickly.
The Great Course spends ~4 of 32 chapters on Rigoletto.
Per the 2012 featurette, without naming the source of world-wide most-performed rankings, this is 2nd among Verdi's operas, 10th among all operas. (another source-less list of the top 100; Operabase Statistics). They simplified badly why Gilda gets murdered.
Unitel, cond. Zanetti; 8
