27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001
Issue No.553
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001 Issue No.553 |
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Hard times hit the Rigolettos
Father and daughter mesh up; who's there but David Blake
Rigoletto; Cairo Opera Company and Chorus; con Ivan Filev, executive director Gihan Morsi, chorus master Aldo Magnato; Cairo Opera House, Main Hall, 18 September
There was nothing wrong with the Rigoletto's father and daughter except that they lived and worked for the Duke of Mantua, not as less salacious as some other dukes, perhaps, but a randy toad of a man.
There was no Signora Rigoletto in Gilda's life, just her father, a clown prepared to work for the duke as a jester. Hidden away in a secret nest is his ultimate treasure, his dove, this daughter Gilda.
The father had done a good job on Gilda. She was beautiful, charming, alluring and with gentle manners -- the raw material of the duke's dreams. And by Act II the court toughs have dumped Gilda into a vegetable sack and delivered her to the Duke's bed of salacious delights, there to pay the price beauty often has to pay to a sex-ridden society.
When the little jester's daughter is finally presented to the great ones of the court she and her father become the object of the cruellest mockery imaginable, none of it lost on Verdi or the director of this production. Verdi unleashes a flood of wonderful, aggressive tunes, tunes that have shaken the world and made him immortal. He knows how to wring a heart. There is Gilda, in white after rape and other unmentionable violence, there the helpless wounded father, and around them swirl the corrosive poisons of the Mantuan court.
Gilda is modern. The rape and the mayhem do not seem to trouble her much, though she is certainly eager to die. And so when Gilda overhears her father's plot to have the Duke murdered she decides to take the place of her vulgar but charming ravisher and is killed instead. For what? Love? Pain? It sounds an almost everyday reaction in these dark Freudian days of sadomasochism. But why leave her father in such total spiritual collapse? Whatever the blurring, her death remains one of the most shattering moments in all of Verdi's operas.
The poor father goes to collect the corpse of the supposedly murdered duke, bundled into a sack, at a cheap country inn. What he unknowingly collects, of course, is his beloved dove, the only treasure of his life. Verdi goes almost as far as you can in his search for tears -- almost as far as in La Forza del Destino and Otello. He evacuates Gilda from the heart rending scene on ravishing notes and tones. The curse laid upon Rigoletto has come home, but not quite, because as he opens the sack and looks at the corpse of his dead daughter from the magic Italian landscape of stars and nights he hears the ineffable tones of the duke's tenor voice singing, of all things, La Donna e mobile. The ironic force of this musical glow strikes you full in the face. Rigoletto is a watershed and as it approaches its end the care and detail Verdi lavished on every part of it becomes ever more apparent.
His work in the galley is over. Spread before him, post Rigoletto, will be the operas of his last period, which end with Otello and Falstaff.
This production is almost a replica of last year's Rigoletto, with one unfortunate fault. Ivan Filev, usually so much on the bright side, seems to have fallen into the doldrums. It came slower, slower and slower, with hardly a tempo innovation from beginning to end. And it didn't help the singers, who like Verdi brusque. Singers today don't have the windbags from which to drag great phrases. Amira Selim repeated her Gilda of last year. The diva dragon syndrome makes no appearances in any of Gihan Morsi's works. She handles Verdi's big operas with a marked sense of proportion. And Rigoletto adds to her success. Amira Selim as Gilda is not just lovely notes, though she knows how to spin them out. This is a performance of tenderness and style. She makes the character real, full of the promise of love and lovely to look at, something that should not be undervalued. A being far from the crowd, living for extraordinary experiences. The voice shone when she put power into it.
Her father, a Verdian grand baritone, needs a voice powered like a trombone and then dipped in dark honey. Alfio Grasso does not have this voice. His typical, middle powered Italianate baritone was made to suffice to fill the role, and he acted without suggesting any of the brute, bullying extravagance that would be necessary to compensate. Rigoletto was left to manage everything with extreme tact.
Rigoletto is superstitious. He is weak, one of life's have-nots. And it was this aspect of the role Grasso illumined. Nothing is as bad as a bad duke and Rigoletto has had his fill.
The role of the Duke of Mantua has allowed some tenors to grow like peaches during a perfect summer. Entire tenor careers have been built upon it. Guiliano Di Filippo made a charming duke. No ruffian he, but one well versed in the techniques of sexual seduction. He had allure and a presence that was joyful without heavy-handed macho tactics.
Gilda might have had a good time with him, which is precisely what throws the father into a panic for Rigoletto, unfortunately, knows the duke completely. His dove would soon have spread her wings and become a different bird of the chase.
The atmospheric scenes were handled by the director with certitude. Russo Salvatore's extraordinary costumes, first seen last year and the best in the Cairo Opera House's repertoire, have lost none of their impact.
As Rigoletto slid gradually into the dusk came the celebrated quartet that slips it gently over into the dreadful beauty of a Verdian night.
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