25 - 31 January 2001
Issue No.518
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 25 - 31 January 2001 Issue No.518 |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Light, more light -- then dark
Giuseppe Verdi, Rigoletto; Cairo Opera Company and Chorus and Cairo Opera Orchestra; Ivan Filev, conductor; Plamen Kartaloff, director; Cairo Opera House: Main Hall, 18 January
Rigoletto is like a dark elegy: Night jar, night jar, sing a song, a little song to send us sliding down the slippery slopes of sleep. This opera is a letter from a bitter world.
Not long after Verdi's death in 1901 a small girl was walking past the Casa Verdi, the home Verdi built for retired singers, in Milan. The child went down on her knees and thanked god for sending us Guiseppe Verdi. Legend or truth, she was right.
Verdi's vast imprint covered all of Italy. He was as formidable as the currents of Messina and the only man who could stand against them. Such fame would have wrecked lesser men but Verdi stood firm. He was rooted to the soil of Italy like a mountain rock.
The passage of time is changing Verdi's image and his music. By the end of the 19th century he was almost out of date; in the 20th, a passé figure who left a few masterpieces -- and the rest was rum-ti-tum.
Everyone pays up in Rigoletto. Verdi's Leopardian pessimism saw to that. He holds up a cracked mirror to a society young but already creaking with age. Nothing is spared, not even the audience. Everyone is blackened, even Rigoletto's daughter Gilda, who yearns after the trashy splendours of the court of the Duke of Mantua and his twitty minions.
The Duke abducts Gilda, carrying her like a bag of potatoes to his palace, rapes her and flings her back to her heart-shattered father. Rigoletto's revenge was the duke's death by dagger. He arranges everything, overlooking but one thing -- l'amour that the daughter feels for her worthless reaper. Reaper it was, because the plan goes wrong and Gilda offers herself up to the knife instead of the duke. Rigoletto collects the horrible potato bag, opens it, and finds his angel's body breathing its last melodies, equal to anything in Verdi's Requiem Mass. It ends with the Blasted Heath of King Lear.
Verdi left the entire thing to Rigoletto, loading him with situations and music in the background of which we hear a constant refrain: "Don't worry where the money comes from; just get it." This unsavoury story comes from Victor Hugo's play Le Roi s'amuse.
This opera is from Verdi's "middle" period. La Traviata came after what he called his "slave days in the galleys," and was an operatic-musical phenomenon. From Verdi's late operas came the leitmotifs that Wagner used in dozens of different ways. We are, with Verdi, in miracle land. Such precision and exactitude belong with Bach and Mozart. He worked and masterpieces flowed from him. When at last he died he lay in his Villa St Agata "magnificent, formidable and silent," as his friend, the composer Boita, said of him. He had a fame few other musicians possessed. We are lucky in having La Traviata and Rigoletto given by the Cairo Opera in the same season, enabling us to judge the absolute perfection of Verdi's writing. He used to say that these two operas were like twins. The great public would prefer Traviata but the better opera was Rigoletto.
This production of Rigoletto gives us an unusually intimate view of Verdi's work and methods. His melodies, with time, grew leaner and leaner, then the orchestra background stayed firm while the rest of it grew more beautiful.
This production wastes no time on anything but the narrative and the music and is handsome to look at with dark, often gloomy colours, sepulchral though with glints of Venetian gold. It suggests great luxury with the most economical means.
This is how to produce opera. The entire Opera Company and the house must be congratulated for showing such care. Though rather conservative, the show has interesting slants on the old-new story, permitting singers to act their parts in this totally nasty, anarchical society, more than is usual. The director is Plamen Kartaloff; his assistant was Gihan Morsi, who goes from strength to strength. The costumes by Russo Salvatori managed to be both splendid and expressive of the general threatening mood of the opera.
The lighting was arranged beautifully by Yasser Shalan. It helped create a strange, rather underwater effect as if we were watching fantastic creatures from a long submerged wreck floating about in an oceanic gloom. This gave the opera an unreal nightmare effect, at times chilling.
And so to the cast of singers. Rigoletto is the baritone role for opera, second only to Don Giovanni. Alfio Grasso proved to have a voice capable of dealing with the outpouring of curses, threats and denunciations and sheer misery that the composer has given him. Grasso made it clear Rigoletto was a nasty piece of work with one redeeming emotion -- the love of his daughter Gilda.
The beautiful notes for Gilda suited Amira Selim. Her voice was perfect for the role of Gilda -- no squeaks or wobbles, but straightforward soprano tone well produced and her whole persona was sympathetic and caring. She did not run off to the libidinous ducal court. She was duped, carried in the vegetable sack to the Duke's bedchamber, which seems always to have had traffic problems.
Sparafucile the assassin was brilliantly sung and acted by Ashraf Sewailam. He had his price, the same as a black snake threatening for recompense. Expensive, but he'd be worth it.
All the smaller roles were fitting. The end came and all the wrong bodies were gone to a fate worse than death, grizzly ornaments in Rigoletto's blasted heath.
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