Rigoletto – Verdi – Welsh National Opera
Image taken from the WNO website
The Welsh National Opera’s history began in 1943 as a result of the efforts of a group of miners, teachers and doctors. It tours across the UK reaching some 30 theatres across Wales and England, entertaining audiences with operas and concerts and showing future generations that opera is rewarding, relevant and a powerful universal art form.
In today’s difficult artistic climate this is an endeavour worth supporting and indeed at the performance on 22 November the 1,800 seater New Theatre in Oxford was full to the brim.
They were not disappointed by James McDonald’s production of Rigoletto, originally staged some 17 years ago and set in a 1970’s style White House. Of course the political parallel of then and now is incredibly relevant and would make hard viewing for any Clinton admirers! Having said that, it is a production that really works, showing the troubled Duke and his sexual desires, which in today’s modernity and ‘Me Too’ movement would be the unacceptable face of male testosterone.
Musically, under the baton of Alexander Joel, it was an outstanding evening with a colourful, fiery and excellent orchestral presentation, together with a group of singers who matched the orchestra all the way.
As The Duke, the Korean tenor David Junghoon Kim, a former Jette Parker Artist, was vocally powerful and precise. His Gilda was his excellent real life wife, the South Korean Jette Parker soprano Haegee Lee, who started slowly, but produced appropriate vocal fireworks in her Act 1 abduction scene. The British mezzo soprano Emma Carrington was a sexy Maddalena and the killer Sparafucile was another Jette Parker member, the deep voiced bass of James Platt.
This brings us to the American baritone Mark Doss, whose Rigoletto was focused and solid with wonderfully interpreted vocal colour reflecting fear and rage on the one hand and loving tenderness on the other. His was a consummate all round performance in a great evening of touring opera.
