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London Coliseum

7 October 2009

Rigoletto

Opera in three acts

by Giuseppe Verdi

Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave

after Victor Hugo’s Le roi s’amuse

English version by James Fenton

First performance of this production: 22 September 1982 by English National Opera at the London Coliseum

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Cast on 7 October 2009:

The “Duke”–Michael Fabiano

Borsa–Peter Van Hulle

Ceprano’s wife–Fiona Canfield

Rigoletto–Charles Johnston

Marullo–David Hoadley

Ceprano–James Gower

Monterone–Iain Paterson

Sparafucile, a professional hit-man–Brindley Sherratt

Gilda, Rigoletto’s daughter–Katherine Whyte

Giovanna–Judith Douglas

A Secretary–Karen Foster

A Henchman–Andrew Tinkler

Maddalena–Madeleine Shaw

Conductor–Stephen Lord

Director–Jonathan Miller

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I attended the performance of Rigoletto by the English National Opera on October 7, 2009. Charles Johnston replaced Anthony Michaels-Moore in the title role, because Michaels-Moore was indisposed with a flu.

The production, set in New York of the 1950′s among Mafiosi types, is a very successful updating. The English translation is also a very good one. It helps the updating that the opera was performed in a translation, since here and there words could be changed to go along with the updating.

Charles Johnston was very effective in the title role. His voice is not a beautiful one, but he sang well and displayed dramatic intelligence. At times a few of his words were different from the words in the projected surtitles, e.g. “bastard” instead of “coward” or vice versa (I don’t necessarily remember exactly what the particular words were). I don’t know whether he had learned an earlier version of the translation, or whether he had simply memorized the words less than perfectly. In any event, he did very well for somebody who had been informed only that day that he would be going on.

Michael Fabiano was vocally the star of the show. He was the one singer with an especially pleasant voice, one that I could imagine wanting to hear again.

Katherine Whyte was an adequate Gilda. Her voice was loud enough to be heard, but not quite loud enough to make the full impression that one could make with the role.

Madeleine Shaw was quite good as Maddalena, and on the whole everybody in the cast was good enough to create a good ensemble performance.