Rigoletto is based on the 1832 play Le roi s’amuse by politicised and impassioned writer Victor Hugo, who is also the master storyteller of The Hunchback of Nôtre Dame and Les Misérables. Giuseppe Verdi is the master melody-maker who lit up the last half of the 19^th century with his operas, including La Traviata and Aida, and who premiered this work in 1851. As one might expect, dealing unflatteringly with the aristocracy, it was political and became instantly banned.

The plot is, for opera, relatively assimilable. The text writer (librettist) Francesco Maria Piave had a knack for a populist plot and easily understood structure. Rigoletto is the jester, the comedy act, for the womanising Duke of Mantua. He becomes cursed by the father of one of the Duke’s female victims when he makes fun of them. However, his only daughter Gilda falls in love with a stalking stranger who just happens to be said lowlife Duke. Gilda is “conquered” by him and her dad, Rigoletto, seeks vengeance through the services of paid assassin Sparafucile and his sister Maddalena. Then comes a final, wrenching and chilling twist.

There are elements reminiscent of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, some 80 years earlier: the seduction, the self-entitled braggadocio and cruelty, the infatuated ingenue, the curse and the descent towards doom. Similarly, like Scarpia in Tosca, the Duke covets Rigoletto’s daughter in church. It must have been an Italian thing.

Confidence is the hallmark of this production that radiates the mastery and invention of Verdi. Here he casts away the old model of divas and divos demonstrating their prowess in show-stopping arias linked by recitatives – bridging lines of sing-speak. Instead, we essentially have a series of duets, music that never stops, played out in this Opera Australia co-production on a towering, massive revolving Michael Yeargan set that ensures unrelenting drama.  There are, however, key moments where restage director Shane Placentino and conductor James Judd have the confidence to take a breath pause while an action is completed, such as the Duke shinnying down a drainpipe from a second storey.

James Judd is a conductor of great mana, respected for his eight-year tenure at the head of the NZSO, and the confidence that he brings to the Auckland Philharmonia performance in the pit is palpable. Tahu Matheson, Head of Music at Opera Australia – son of the late, much-respected conductor John Matheson (Auckland Choral etc) – notes Verdi’s control of mood through the manipulation of chords and progressions. This creates some wonderful-delayed gratification, or anti-cipation, as optimism is sometimes held back by something as simple as a reticence to deliver a shift to the major key when we are quivering in the shadows of the accursed minor – literally as Rigoletto is cursed by Monterone, a condemned courtier whose daughter is seduced by the Duke.

Confidence comes also from the late Elijah Moshinsky’s practiced production that has been on the boards since 1993, safe here in the hands of an inspiring cast which revolves around the impressive power and experience of James Clayton in the title role.

Setting the filmic metier from the very start, a slick stage aperture opens on the scene of the opulent palace ballroom where the drunken angle of a couple of the wall candelabra suggests good times have been had. Now it’s Pati time, and the Duke, played by Amitai Pati, confides his perfidious plans to courtier Matteo Borsa, sung warmly by Taylor Wallbank.  A little opening night reticence here immediately vanishes, as the colour and spectacle of the court flow across the stage. The setting is the 1950s/60s so the highly choreographed dancing is a take on the twist. The male chorus is tunefully hearty and takes on the unusual choreography of the dancer/director unselfconsciously.

Although in a smaller role as Countess Ceprano, soprano Sarah Mileham shows instant stage presence, and baritone Alfred Fonoti-Fuimaono plays her aggrieved husband, Count Ceprano, with a faultless performance that, it is becoming evident, will typify this production at all cast levels. James Harrison as the cursing Count Monterone and Joel Amosa as the Cavaliere Marullo complete the named characters.

Next, in his dressing room, as he takes time to wash off his make-up, Rigoletto is surprised by the henchman Sparafucile (Jud Arthur) popping up from a clothing rack. This quirkily gives little clue of the easy, physical malfeasance that will develop as he grooms the jealous jester to commission him as the Duke’s intended murderer. Once again, that pacing, that assurance so imbued in this show, lubricates our enjoyment of Verdi’s seamless, masterful musicality. Sparafucile and Rigoletto meet with eerie music – short strings, woodwinds, bassoons, clarinet, solo cello (muted) and solo double bass. The message is ominous and clear.

After a tough day at work, like a suited civil servant, Rigoletto heads home with an easy commute, courtesy of the revolve, to be embraced by his daughter Gilda, while a Betty Crocker housekeeper, Giovanna (Sian Sharp), convincingly prepares pasta in the adjacent kitchen and glugs some of the cooking wine! Giovanna is given the task to “watch over this lovely flower” whose innocence is carried on the delightful flute passages of the APO’s Luca Manghi and Jennifer Seddon-Mori.

In a modern context, we may contemplate Rigoletto’s denying his daughter her own identity, as she seeks knowledge of her mother and family, but there is no denying the sweetness and harmony of their filial duet.  As the addios mount up, and the piangi (weeping) gathers on the pluvial horizon, the emotional tone intensifies.  In her aria Caro Nome (Beloved Name), Elena Perroni brings to Gilda a delicate sweetness, but with a tinge of piquancy that questions the character’s total innocence – a little like Olivia Newton-John in Grease before she found leather. This is a stand-out performance.

The opening night audience was captured by not just the sheer power and conviction of James Clayton’s Rigoletto, but also, in this scene, by his tenderness and pathos; a tour de force recognised with an eruption of applause for his aria Have Pity (Pietate).  For every gallows, he sings, there is an altar.

Giovanna is bribed to become less protective, in a way prefacing her other role cast as the assassin’s sister Maddelena.  Things are coming to a rolling boil as the Duke takes a streetcar named revolve to the swampy tavern where Sparafucile, in Stanley Kowalski mode, sharpens more than his physicality. By now, we are along for the ride well and truly – like binge watching a murder mystery that you just cannot switch off. Sweetness seems to have rubbed off on even the philandering Duke who proclaims “even rulers can be enslaved by love”.

Departing from the duet milieu, Act Three reveals the Verdi mastery again, as two duets coexist in “Bella figlia dell’amore” where father and daughter observe the assassin’s sister seducing the Duke.  Tenderness softens the harsher natures, although Amitai Pati’s Duke was a rather sympathetic reading of the character, overall. His star turn, La Donna è Mobile (Woman is fickle) had a little less braggadocio but was also expertly and confidently delivered. It is this aria that is to propel the final twist in the story.

The appearance of a streetcar named Bambina garners an audience murmur of recognition and the inevitable church bells and storm swell the force of destiny towards its dénouement.  With the cry “È morta!  Ah, la maledizione!” the curse is fulfilled, and Clayton’s Rigoletto, “weeping tears of blood” implodes with grief.  What force! What beautifully, bitterly balanced power! What faultless and irresistible entertainment on an addictive and unrelenting storm of genius!  It doesn’t get any better than this.  

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