RIGOLETTO

Today I saw the Met production of Verdi's RIGOLETTO in the digital telecast at the Sheppard Grande.  That's the opera about Rigoletto, the nasty hunchbacked jester at the court of Mantua's lecherous, happy-go-lucky Duke, who has an innocent daughter called Gilda whom he worships and hides away but she falls in love with the Duke who takes her virginity so Rigoletto schemes to murder the Duke but Gilda takes the Duke's place and dies instead.

The story is clever in the way Rigoletto's nastiness keeps rebounding onto Gilda:  he makes fun of a courtier whose daughter the Duke deflowered, but he ends up in the same boat; he enthusiastically joins a plot to kidnap someone's wife but finds out too late it's Gilda they're really after; he tries to kill the Duke but kills Gilda instead.  It has a great beginning, plunging you into the milieu, and a great ending like Verdi's IL TROVATORE. (Both operas' endings are the equivalent of a movie freeze-frame ending.)

This production moves the setting to Las Vegas in the Rat Pack era.  The Duke becomes a singing star and Rigoletto is his sidekick in a loud Argyle cardigan, with no beard (another of those details Giuseppe doesn't like). Gilda ends up in a car trunk instead of a sack.  The titles are often clever in updating the lines to Rat Pack lingo: "Heaven brought my baby back to me!" and "Beat it, no handouts!" The lead singers were pretty good and it didn't feel long.