No Cameras, Flash Equipment, Or Tape Recorders Are Allowed in the Auditorium of the Musical Arts Center
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Cast (in order of appearance) September 21, 2007 September 22, 2007 !e Duke of Mantua . John Rodger Brian Arreola Borsa, a courtier . Christopher Nelson Carmund White Countess Ceprano . Sara Radke Johanna Moffitt Rigoletto, court jester . Jonathan Green James Ivey Marullo, a courtier . Sean McCarthur Aubrey Allicock Count Ceprano . Steven Eddy Nathan Brown Count Monterone . Jesse Malgieri Adam Cioffari Sparafucile, a professional assassin . Max Wier Steven Hrycelak Gilda, Rigoletto’s daughter . Marie Masters Megan Radder Giovanna, Gilda’s companion . Julia Snowden Robin Smith !e Court Page . Rainelle Bumbaugh Lindsay Kerrigan Maddalena . Nicole Birkland Lindsay Ammann TO OUR PATRONS: Curtain time for IU Opera !eater is promptly at 8 p.m., by which time all opera goers should be in their seats. Latecomers will be seated only on the third terrace, or at the discretion of the management. !ank you for your cooperation. Rigoletto will conclude at approximately 10:45 p.m. No Cameras, Flash Equipment, or Tape Recorders are allowed in the auditorium of the Musical Arts Center. Indiana University Opera !eater presents, as its 393rd production Rigoletto An Opera in !ree Acts Music by Giuseppe Verdi Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave Stephen Lord, Conductor Vincent Liotta, Director Michael Vernon, Choreographer Max Röthlisberger and C. David Higgins, Designers Mike Schwandt, Lighting Designer Christian Capocaccia, Italian Diction Coach Sung in Italian, with English Supertitles Adapted from Victor Hugo’s play Le roi s’amuse Used by arrangement with G. Schirmer Rigoletto was first performed on March 11, 1851, at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice We dedicate these performances to the memory of Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti, who died on September 6, 2007 ________________ Musical Arts Center Friday Evening, September Twenty-First Saturday Evening, September Twenty-Second Friday Evening, September Twenty-Eighth Saturday Evening, September Twenty-Ninth Eight O’ Clock One Hundred Twenty-Eighth Program of the 2007-08 Season Cast of Characters (In order of vocal appearance) !e Duke of Mantua Brian Arreola, John Rodger Borsa, a courtier Christopher Nelson, Carmund White Countess Ceprano Johanna Moffitt, Sara Radke Rigoletto, court jester Jonathon Green, James Ivey Marullo, a courtier Aubrey Allicock, Sean McCarthur Count Ceprano Nathan Brown, Stephen Eddy Count Monterone Adam Cioffari, Jesse Malgieri Sparafucile, a professional assassin Steven Hrycelak, Max Weir Gilda, Rigoletto’s daughter Marie Masters, Megan Radder Giovanna, Gilda’s companion Robin Smith, Julia Snowden !e Court Page Rainelle Bumbaugh, Lindsay Kerrigan Maddalena Nicole Birkland, Lindsay Ammann !e Usher Austin Kness Courtiers Adonis Abuyen, Jay Bennett, Chris Cheung, Christopher Johnson, Jonathan Matthews, Austin Kness, Lucas !omson, Benjamen Werley, Caleb Winsor, Miroslaw Witkowski Courtesans Suna Avci, Jacqueline Brecheen, Elizabeth Davidson, Jessica Marcrum, Amanda Russo, Audrey Tornblom Officers/Soldiers David Johnson, Grady McCoy Dancers Colleen Anthonisen, Carly Baum (9/28, 29), Anne Duffey, Grace Reeves (9/21, 22), Vincent Brewer, Pablo Sanchez (9/21, 22), Paul Dandridge (9/28, 29), Ben Warner Supertitles translation by Sarah Stankiewicz Synopsis of Scenes Act I. In the Duke’s Palace, then in the Village. Intermission Act II. In the Duke’s Palace. Intermission Act III. At Spararafucile’s Inn. Synopsis Place: Mantua, Italy Time: 1500s ACT I. At his palace, the Duke lightheartedly boasts to his courtiers of amorous conquests, escorting Countess Ceprano, his latest prize, to a private chamber as his hunchback jester, Rigoletto, makes fun of her husband. Marullo announces that Rigoletto is suspected of keeping a mistress, and Ceprano plots with the courtiers to punish the hated buffoon. Attention is diverted when Monterone, an elderly nobleman, enters to denounce the Duke for seducing his daughter. Ridiculed by Rigoletto and placed under arrest, Monterone pronounces a curse on both the Duke and his jester. On his way home that night, Rigoletto broods on Monterone’s curse. Rejecting the services offered by Sparafucile, a professional assassin, he notes that the word can be as deadly as the dagger. Greeted by his daughter, Gilda, whom he keeps hidden from the world, he reminisces about his late wife. He then warns the governess, Giovanna, to admit no one. But as Rigoletto leaves, the Duke slips unseen into the garden. !e nobleman declares his love to Gilda, who has noticed him in church. He tells her he is a poor student named Gualtier Maldè, but at the sound of footsteps, he rushes away. Tenderly repeating his name, Gilda retires. Meanwhile, the courtiers stop Rigoletto outside his house and ask him to help abduct Ceprano’s wife, who lives across the way. !e jester is duped into wearing a blindfold and holding a ladder against his own garden wall. !e courtiers break into his home and carry off Gilda. Rigoletto, hearing her cry for help, tears off his blindfold and rushes into the house, discovering only her scarf. He remembers Monterone’s curse. ACT II. In his palace, the Duke is distraught over the disappearance of Gilda. When his courtiers return, saying it is they who have taken her and that she is now in his bedchamber, he joyfully rushes off to the conquest. Soon Rigoletto enters, warily looking for Gilda; the courtiers bar his way, though they are astonished to learn the girl is not his mistress but his daughter. !e jester reviles them, then embraces the disheveled Gilda as she runs in to tell of her courtship and abduction. As Monterone is led to the dungeon, Rigoletto vows to avenge them both. ACT III. At night, outside Sparafucile’s run-down inn on the outskirts of town, Rigoletto and Gilda watch as the Duke flirts with the assassin’s sister and accomplice, Maddalena. Rigoletto sends his daughter off to disguise herself as a boy for her escape to Verona, then pays Sparafucile to murder the Duke. As a storm rages, Gilda returns to hear Maddalena persuade her brother to kill not the Duke but the next visitor to the inn instead. Resolving to sacrifice herself for the Duke, despite his betrayal, Gilda enters the inn and is stabbed. Rigoletto comes back to claim the body and gloats over the sack Sparafucile gives him, only to hear his supposed victim singing in the distance. Frantically cutting open the sack, he finds Gilda, who dies asking forgiveness. Monterone’s curse is fulfilled. —courtesy of Opera News Notes to the Opera by Kunio Hara As was typical of his work with Francesco Maria Piave, Giuseppe Verdi was deeply involved in the writing of the libretto of Rigoletto. Not only did Verdi choose the subject matter and literary source of the opera (Victor Hugo’s play Le Roi s’amuse), he also demanded that Piave follow the original as closely as possible and made suggestions about the libretto’s dramatic structure and versification. Close collaborations between composers and librettists were not unusual in the mid- nineteenth century. However, that between Verdi and Piave, in which the opinion and desires of the composer almost entirely guided the creation of the librettist, was of a new kind. Verdi’s urge to manage the libretto continued throughout his life, and his working method was adopted by the composers of the following generation. Puccini, for example, employed two librettists in creating La bohème: Luigi Illica (who fleshed out the basic plot suggested by the composer) and Giuseppe Giacosa (who turned Illica’s prose drama into verse). Verdi did delegate one troublesome aspect to Piave: censorship. In his instructions, Verdi urged the librettist to contact the appropriate individuals in Venice to ensure that the local authorities would not reject the subject of the opera. !roughout the early part of Verdi’s career, the libretti of works performed in Italian opera houses were carefully scrutinized for their potentially subversive political messages and anti- clerical sentiments. !e severity of censorship varied from region to region; typically artists fared better in the Austrian-controlled northern provinces that included Milan, Florence, and Venice, than in the south. Nevertheless, the pan-European political turmoil of 1848, during which Venice proclaimed a short-lived independence from the Austrian Empire, made the authorities there nervous. Furthermore, Hugo’s original play had been banned by the French government after one performance in 1832 on the grounds of immorality and defamation of the monarch. French censors found the unflattering portrayal of a historic king, Francis I, and the jester’s open antagonism toward the courtiers problematic. To Verdi’s surprise and despite Piave’s reassurances, the Venetian censor unexpectedly rejected the initial version of the libretto. !e management of the Teatro La Fenice, which was to produce the opera, conveyed to Verdi the censor’s suggestions for alteration, which included softening the king’s debauched behavior and eliminating the jester’s physical deformities. Verdi reacted vehemently to these proposed changes claiming that the logic of the opera rested entirely on the sovereign’s being an unapologetic libertine. On the point of the jester’s hunchback, he maintained that he found the representation of a character who is “externally deformed and ridiculous but internally passionate and full of love” compelling precisely because of this juxtaposition. After further exchanges, a compromise was struck between the composer and the theater management. !e setting was transferred from Francis I’s Paris to sixteenth-century Mantua ruled by an unnamed duke while other characters’ names were Italianized accordingly. A problematic scene in Act II of Hugo’s original that made the monarch’s sexual transgression against the jester’s daughter all too apparent was eliminated entirely. Despite these concessions, Verdi was able to retain many of the physical and moral attributes of the characters he found to be crucial in Hugo’s play. Although the censors in Italy generally had little to say about the music itself, Verdi’s decision to adhere closely to Hugo’s dramatic conception did influence the unusual musical characterization of the protagonists of the opera.