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Bartlett Sher must have ventured more than a mile inside the Metropolitan Opera as rehearsal for Verdi’s staging of “Rigoletto,” which began one last morning.
Whenever the singers stopped, Sher would run. Sometimes up the stairs next to the orchestra pit, notes for the actors. Sometimes in the hallway of the auditorium to meet with a team working on consoles and laptops. He had a list of things he needed to improve: the paint job of the set, the lighting, the layering of the crowd action of a party scene.
“I need another month,” he said, pausing to study the scene.
Instead, Sher had about two weeks. Her “Rigoletto” opens on December 31It’s part of the Met’s annual New Year’s Eve premiere, directed by Daniele Rustioni and starring Quinn Kelsey. This staging, co-production with the Berlin State Opera, premiered in Germany But so much has changed in transit that it has been rebuilt almost from scratch, down to the cable and under the threat of the Omicron variant.
Sher’s new “Rigoletto” — a busy Tony Award-winning director whose work is currently on Broadway (“To Kill a Mockingbird”) and coming soon to the Lincoln Center Theater (“Intimate Clothing”)—the third to appear at the Met this century. Tenor Piotr Beczala, who plays the ferocious Duke of Mantua, jokingly said in an interview that he is “the Duke in charge”: Michael Mayer’s Rat Pack “Rigoletto” in 2013.
That’s a lot of turnover for a house where some staging took decades. Peter Gelb, the Met’s managing director, said there was “no standardized thinking” behind switching productions. Gelb said Franco Zeffirelli’s generous traditional approaches to “La Bohème” and “Turandot” are not going anywhere. However, he noticed that audiences tended to lose interest in modern updates more quickly, like Mayer’s “Rigoletto,” set in 1960s Las Vegas rather than the libretto’s 16th-century Italy.
Declining interest wasn’t the only problem with Mayer’s production. Its complex dramaturgy baffled critics, and it gained a reputation as a neon-lit show with little content. Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times reviews the premiere wrote the concept “not so daring” and “not that original”. Notably, it was a vehicle for guest artists, including soprano Rosa Feola, who had a sensational Met debut as Rigoletto’s daughter Gilda in 2019 and is now returning to that role.
Like Mayer, Sher cites the action of the opera, but he called Weimar-era Berlin – a “prefascist world” of uncontrolled cruelty, crime and extravagance. He avoided putting the business under Nazi rule, choosing instead the 1920s, the same setting as the popular TV series “Babylon Berlin”: a society on the brink of turmoil. While the period was followed by the dukes and duchesses of the libretto, it allowed Sher to explore “how a corrupt leadership influences a culture, how wealth and privilege dominate and oppress the people under it”.
Sher’s ideas hit a snag in Berlin. He had planned for the set to rotate on a turntable for cinematic transitions and the efficient division of public and private spaces. Finally fixed in place, an Art Deco nightclub with murals adapted from works by George Grosz that caricatured the corruption and complicity of the era.
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“It was more static, and it was harder to release what was in music,” Sher recalled.
Reviews from the German press were harsh, and many did not see Sher as an American. When I wrote to The Times that Sher’s treatment of the Weimar Republic appeared to be “more a context than a concept,” I had my own issues with the production.
Sher admitted that the Berlin staging had room to grow, particularly in how to convey the psychological complexity of the work. But he was happy with it.
“I felt it was honest and it was clear,” he said. “A good artist must accept the limits of every iteration of what he does. And it was like workshop production to fall in love with the work.”
He now had the opportunity to revise his production as during the previews of a musical; This is a luxury that opera can hardly provide. (An exception is the “Intimate Apparel.”) He said his intentions for the Met’s revival are largely the same, but will differ in crucial ways from Berlin.
He finally got his turntable and thus a very different set; indeed, the first look at the entrance is an old brick exterior rather than a burst of color inside. The Grosz murals are gone, replaced by yellowed red marble—an issue with the artist’s property, Sher said, but the stage curtain from a Grosz painting still stands.
The actors began rehearsing with the nightclub that had recently spun on stage. Previously, they were crafted in a basement studio with only suggestions—a door frame, a pillar—and Sher blocked their movement while describing how the set would turn. A copy of the Victor Hugo play “Le Roi S’Amuse” (“The King Entertains Himself”), which inspired the opera, was available for reference. Rustioni was perched on a stool, waving his stick and singing from his memory. (During breaks, he turned left to study Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro”. He will lead the Met from January 8th)
With the Met closing in March 2020, days before the opening of Massenet’s “Werther,” Beczala returned to rehearsals there for the first time since. And Kelsey, who has been a fixture in the house for over a decade, was preparing for her biggest role ever—”my first proper leadership,” she said. Many of Sher’s instructions during basement rehearsal were about bringing more transparency to the complex opening scene of the opera.
Clarity is a hallmark of Sher’s work, whether the production is “Rigoletto” or “Rigoletto”. “South Pacific.” He said it was something he strived to “release the power and truth of the opera and hopefully add to it a layer of meaning of its resonance today.”
After a pause he added with a laugh, “It doesn’t matter.”
Kelsey said that resonance is very present in production. “Whichever side you’re on, it’s surprising that it really reflects a lot of what we’re feeling in our country right now – it’s just the tension itself,” he added. The dynamics played out between the main characters are more complex. Rigoletto believes that the tragic events that led to the death of his daughter were the result of the curse of a dishonorable nobleman. But opera is not that simple.
“I like to say that Duke was polygamous, but ethics did not resolve monogamy,” Sher said. “It goes into everything, then drops it in a second, it’s really dangerous. Yet Gilda, this poor innocent girl has been manipulated by her father’s ridiculously over-emphasized love and is in a washing machine between herself and the Duke. The great journey for me is to find out how I can give him authority over these men who rule him.”
Behind all this, there is a composition that starts with the theme of curse and can’t get out of that darkness. “Verdi was very proud of the curse,” said Rustioni. “When Rigoletto sings, you see the dotted rhythm repeating. It’s like an idea fix.”
Among Rustioni’s restorations to the opera – like an often cut cadence in the Act I duet for Gilda and the Duke – is to keep a string of Rigoletto as a Rigoletto string, rather than ending it with a higher E flat. curse motif.
“I think the production is very respectful of Verdi,” said Rustioni. “Everything is embedded in music, and this ever-changing, swirling element helps to convey the mood.”
Sher said the “cinematic movement” of his set is his way of achieving “a mise-en-scene that fluctuates throughout the music and text.” Ideally, “With enough time you can really do the right thing. We’ll see.”
An obstacle may come your way. About 10 days before opening night, the Omicron variant was spreading fast in New York. Queues formed around the test sites, and panic led to the search for test kits in the home. There were Broadway shows in a dangerous situation “Christmas Show Starring The Radio City Rockettes” with anticipation and sudden cancellations and a story finished his run early due to breakthrough infections in the dump.
Not yet having to cancel a performance, the Met has taken every safety precaution it can – a vaccination requirement without exception, booster requirement on the road It was tested twice a week in January and internally — and Gelb said it was “extremely confident” until recently. Now, he feels a kinship with the unfortunate Rigoletto.
“He has a curse that ruined his life,” Gelb said. “We are all under a greater curse: we have Omicron’s curse.”
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