Rigoletto

Rigoletto: Intimacy in a Vast Space

Running Time: 3 hrs

Austin Lyric Opera has once again executed in bold strokes the staging of a classic opera in the vaulting openness of the City Coliseum. Last year's hot Carmen gives way to this season's cold Rigoletto -- Verdi's operatic take on Victor Hugo's drama of a treacherous and hypocritical Mantuan duchy in the 1600s, peopled with a lascivious duke, a wicked jester, several naïve beauties, plenty of nasty courtiers, and a most effective curse. Director Joseph McClain again shows a flair for the theatrical and, with Michael Raiford's alley stage, finds a degree of intimacy in that vast space.

Monday's cast (the principals alternate performances) included the magnificent Ping Yu as Rigoletto. From the opening emblematic tableau, atop a cushioned bench, surrounded by candelabra-bearing courtiers, Yu registered the anguish -- psychological and physical -- of the twisted jester. Yu's baritone was rich throughout the night, laced with a grimness that pervaded his character's every inflection and gesture. This man is doomed, and the audience knows it. Rafael Davila, a well-known face to ALO audiences, played the Duke with gusto. Relishing his scalawag role, Davila ravished and toyed with the young pretties that came too near his flame. His unexpected turn from lustful hunter to honest lover allowed Davila to offer a gentler side to his robust character. Above all, Davila played the Duke, well, playfully. He has one of the best known tenor arias in opera, "La donna è mobile," and he sang it with evident pleasure: "Woman is fickle," and you can't trust her. He might just as well be singing about himself; as quickly as he wins his presumed true love's virginity, off he romps to the next lady.

That presumed true love is Rigoletto's daughter, Gilda, ineffectively hidden from the wickedness of the Duke's gaze by her fearful father. Monday night, Arlene Alvarado stepped into the role on short notice and turned in a touching performance of a young girl opening to love and cruelly betrayed. Gilda grows up in a hurry, and Alvarado was equal to the character's newfound fortitude, taking on that sheer volume of vocal responsibilities: singing intimate duets with her father and later her lover, as well as taking part in some of Verdi's most powerful music: the stormy trio that precedes her demise and the wonderful quartet ("un di, se ben rammento mi") that offsets the anguish she and her father feel spying the bestial joy of the betraying Duke and his latest conquest.

Somewhere along the course of this dark and stormy opera, McClain and Raiford seem to get lost in their design and staging choices. The choices are bold, powerful ones, but there is a feeling of disconnectedness between Raiford's haunting wrapped and bound statues and the human activity below, and McClain allows several key moments to unfold rather anonymously. When the canvas is the length of half a football field, it can be hard to focus attentions. It is no small feat, then, that the opera's wealth of psychological detail is made quite clear, even in this hulking chamber.