‘Rigoletto’ fresh, yet familiar
With its sharply conceived and darkly atmospheric production of “Rigoletto,” San Francisco Opera turned to one of its redoubtable repertory staples to open the company’s summer season. Verdi’s masterly mid-career tragedy leads a slate of A-list crowdfavorite operas, with “Don Giovanni” and “La Bohème” waiting in the wings. Back on the War Memorial Opera House stage for the third time in 11 years, this “Rigoletto” looked and sounded reassuringly familiar in its broad contours at the Wednesday, May 31, opening. Michael Yeargan’s stark and haunting sets, a de Chirico-like colonnade of looming walls, receding arches and glaring red interiors, framed the action with stern precision, enhanced by Gary Marder’s shadowy nocturnal lighting. Clad mostly in black and singing with knife-edge assurance, the superb San Francisco Opera chorus fully embodied the 16th century Mantua mob of scheming, cynical courtiers. From a doom-filled overture onward, music director Nicola Luisotti led a first-rate performance by the orchestra. The strings capered and shiv-
ered. The brasses sent out dire warnings and mourned the results. Verdi’s brilliant instrumental narrative took hold and rarely slackened.
The important variables here were the principals, one of whom was making her company debut (soprano Nino Machaidze as Gilda) while another (tenor Pene Pati) was taking his first crack at the role of Gilda’s feckless lover, the Duke of Mantua.
It was the singer already well known to San Francisco Opera audiences who dominated and largely defined the dramatic character of the evening. In a performance marked by blighted dignity, baritone Quinn Kelsey played the title role of the jester in a strikingly forthright manner.
His voice grainy with foreboding, Kelsey moved Rigoletto from the realm of twisted archetype to a more ordinary and three-dimensional tragic hero. Craven pleading and caustic humor were kept to a minimum. He walked and carried himself like a man shouldering burdens — of job, parenthood, nostalgia and dark demons — with which any listener might readily identify. Even this jester’s hump was less disfiguring than usual. If he weren’t singing Italian, one might envision him as a Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman.”
The singer’s interpretation grew in stature as the evening progressed. Bone-weary after a long day at court and a disturbing curse from the ill-used Count Monterone (a firmvoiced Reginald Smith Jr.), this Rigoletto gave his duet with Gilda a deep paternal ache. His mock-casual “La rà, la rà” tune took on an eerie funereal lilt. Even when he was pleading for the return of the jester’s abducted daughter, Kelsey projected a kind of stony, impacted reserve. None of this, he seemed to sense all along, was going to turn out well.
For sheer tonal pleasure, Pati’s Duke made a connection. His tenor, if a little light in spots, was buttery and suavely delivered. His acting however, was sedentary and largely colorless, in the stand-and-deliver mode, up to and including an almost immobile “La donna a mobile.” Machaidze sang Gilda with technical finesse, but her voice sounded heavy for the role, without a yielding, innocent tenderness early on. She was better, more quietly desperate, in Gilda’s reckless third act and death scene.
Bass Andrea Silvestrelli sang the hired killer, Sparafucile, with a rank and sinuous authority. Mezzo-soprano Zanda Šve de was seductivelty repellent as Maddalena, his co-conspirator sister.
The sum effect of these uneven parts was a “Rigoletto” that didn’t take the full measure of the opera’s dramatic intensity. The story, based on a play by Victor Hugo, unfolded in a lean and deliberate fashion under Rob Kearley’s stage direction that shortchanged some of the ardor and poignancy. The most effective narrative instrument was the orchestral one Luisotti deployed in the pit.
Supported by that musical momentum, Kelsey delivered an austere but movingly nuanced title performance that gave this “Rigoletto” its strongest sense of urgency and fresh invention. To that, attention surely must be paid.