South Florida Classical Review

Vladislav Sulimsky performed the title role in Verdi’s Rigoletto Friday night at Palm Beach Opera. Photo: Bruce Bennett

Few places have been as romanticized as the cities of Renaissance Italy, where the human spirit soared in great works of painting, sculpture and architecture.

In Verdi’s opera Rigoletto we see their splendid buildings inhabited by people who dress like ladies and gentlemen and act like a street gang, in an environment dominated by lust, bullying and sadism. Verdi’s dark masterpiece was the last work of the season for Palm Beach Opera, and the company did full justice to a grim story that’s accompanied by some of the world’s most famous arias.

The action unfolded on opulent sets portraying the buildings and streets of Mantua. The palace of the Duke of Mantua was particularly impressive, with blood-red drapery, a curved wall of frescoes and a towering statue— all illuminated in shadowy lighting that gave the interior an eerie cast.

The role of the hunchbacked court jester Rigoletto is complex and challenging. Ridiculous in his jester’s costume, boiling with resentment at the frivolous dandies he’s forced to entertain, he is ennobled by a selfless love for his daughter.

The baritone Vladislav Sulimsky gave a compelling performance, expressing all sides of Rigoletto’s character. If his court jester antics in the first act seemed more irritating than authentic, he was effectively snide in making fun of one of the Duke’s victims, seeming to justify the horrors that were in store for him later.

In his great second-act aria “Cortigiani, vil razza dannata,” he expressed red-hot fury at the kidnappers of his daughter, spitting out the word “assessini,” then, falling to his knees in front of the Duke’s thuggish courtiers, singing in golden, soaring tones as he begged for her return.

He expressed the tender side of his nature in duets with his daughter Gilda, singing with warmth of the late wife who loved him in spite of his deformity and of his love for Gilda, with the two singers achieving a vocal and physical chemistry that went a long way toward the performance’s success. The role of Rigoletto will be sung on Saturday by Devid Cecconi.

Aigul Khismatullina as Gilda and Jonathan Tetelman as the Duke in Palm Beach Opera’s Rigoletto. Photo: Bruce Bennett

As Rigoletto’s daughter Gilda, the soprano Aigul Khismatullina gave a bravura vocal performance while expressing the roles of devoted daughter and naive, lovestruck girl.

One of the opera’s great moments is the famous aria “Caro nome,” and the singing and stage direction made it the highlight it was intended to be. Bathed in moonlight outside her house, she sang the aria while walking along a ledge, climbing the stairs to the second floor and delivering the last lines of coloratura while leaning over the balcony facing the audience. She sang not only in lustrous, dead-on accurate tones in the aria’s flourishes and high notes, but she brought a dreamy, youthful quality that expressed a young girl’s feeling at falling in love. The role of Gilda will be sung on Saturday by Patricia Westley.

Slender, with a dark moustache and thick dark hair, the tenor Jonathan Tetelman had the dashing looks of a movie villain. But while the Duke of Mantua commits some of the opera’s major atrocities, he was strangely appealing in the role.

He tossed off the renowned aria “La donna è mobile” with an easy lightness, accuracy and a foppish swagger as he drank wine in Sparafucile’s tavern. But his greatest moment came not in any of the Duke’s villainous statements but in “Parmi veder le lagrime,” an out-of-character expression of grief at his lover Gilda’s disappearance. Singing throughout with an effortless lyricism, his voice arched into a brilliant, impassioned high passage as he expressed his love, achieving an intensity of expression and vocal luster that was a high point of the evening.

The role will be sung on Saturday sung by Pavel Valuzhin, with Tetelman returning for Sunday’s matinee.

The hired killer Sparafucile is one of the great secondary roles in opera, with a sinister opening aria and a curiously ethical approach to his profession. The bass Morris Robinson, a former All-American college offensive lineman, gave a formidable portrayal. Clad in black as he approached Rigoletto on a gloomy street, he achieved a dark lyricism as he described his method of murder. At the end of their encounter, he repeated his name, dropping his voice to a low note that he sustained for an almost impossibly long time as he strode off the street.

As the killer’s sister Maddalena, Elissa Pfaender gave an effective performance, starting out as a professional seductress as her brother’s accomplice and then falling under the Duke’s spell, her rich voice contributing to the success of the last-act quartet.

Monterone, who gets ridiculed by Rigoletto after denouncing the Duke for seducing his daughter, issues a curse of the hunchback that haunts the opera. The moment of the curse didn’t come off as quite the thunderous climax that it can be, but baritone Mario Manzo rose to the occasion in the second act as he’s led off to prison and expressed in furious tones his frustration at the Duke’s continued well being.

The members of the opera company’s chorus distinguished themselves as the Duke’s loathsome courtiers. Dressed in Renaissance finery with puffy collars and opulent robes, they sang with accuracy and power, taking visible pleasure in their scheming and sadism.

The orchestra, conducted by David Stern, gave a vigorous performance. The musicians played with sharp precision in the fast nervous figures that provide so much energy to vocal passages and rich power in tuttis, such as the grave music that foreshadows the calamity to come at Sparafucile’s tavern. In the famous quartet of Act 3, Stern led a finely balanced performance with all four voices coming through in their conflicting emotions.

With the exception of the Prelude, stage director Omer Ben Seadia supervised a compelling performance that put the music first and brought out the essence of the drama. In the Prelude, however, she made the decision to raise the curtain on Rigoletto seated dejectedly at the base of a statue in the Duke’s palace, where he takes off his jester’s hat and puts it on again, a distraction from the excellent playing of the orchestra in the stark brass tones that announce the tragedy to come.

But she successfully expressed the complex relationship between Rigoletto and his daughter, one of the only good and true things in the opera’s blasted moral landscape. 

The easy intimacy of their Act 1 meeting gave way later to stilted distancing, as they moved to opposite ends of the stage as Gilda described what the Duke and his henchmen did to her and Rigoletto shook his fist his anger; the scene then ended with the two coming together in reconciliation.

Before the performance, Palm Beach Opera’s general director, James Barbato, announced next season’s operas: Verdi’s Aida, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci.

Palm Beach Opera will repeat Rigoletto 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach. On Saturday the role of Rigoletto will be sung by Devid Cecconi, Gilda by Patricia Westley and the Duke by Pavel Valuzhin. pbopera.org

Posted in Performances
No Comments