Opera by
Guiseppe Verdi
Libretto:
Francesco Maria Piave
Regi:
Gintaras Varnas
Scenography:
Jurate Paulekaite
Costumes:
Juozas Statkevicius
Video projections:
Andrius Jakucionis
Choreography:
Elita Bukovska
By Henning Hoholt
Foto: Mikhail Rashkovsky
After having bee sitting the whole first act irritating us, about why the scanographer and the costume designer have been permitted to make such an aourfull scenography and costumes to this wonderful opera.
We read in the first break that the excellent director of the performance Gintaras Varnas, were writing in the program the following:
Astonishment no. 1 (Excerpt)
Rigoletto is such a well,known and popular opera that it seems to leavo no room for astonishment whatso ever. A story about the Duke as a dissolute cvillain abd Rigoletto as a poor, wretched, hunchbacked buffon - all wrapped in Verdis famous tunes.
But.... if you forget for a while everything you know, and listen to the music attentively as if it was your first time, and even more carefully read through ranslations of the libretto, you finally get astonished!
Everything is not as simple as it seems. And then it becomes even more interesting.
Then you start perceiving Rigoletto not as noble-minded, but rather as jealous and ranconous personality, bursting with complexes and anger, raiting the whole humankind for his own mishap. It is Riggoletto himself who provoces the basic conflict in the opera aand even the terrible curse of Monterone in course of the opera his emotional cardiogram displayes remarkably contrasting shifts.
Gintaras Varnas is also referring to, among others inspirations, from Robert Wienes: Das Kabinet des Dr.Caligari, as I remember well from my film and media studying periode.
So after that we tryed to understand better, and the performance was being better and better, and the regi part of it is, as it uses to be when mr. Varnas is the director, excellent, and we are understanding all the details there are being shown to us, it seems logical, and well done.
But I must admit, that with such an excellent cast, that we heard on our evening, the 11th of december, we still dont like the scenography and the costumes. Why do they, (scenographer and costumes), have to try to make some thing strange out of every beautiful old opera. Separately seen, some of the costumes were beautiful and outstanding, f.exs Countess Cepranos white dream in the first act, and Rigolettos second act yellow costume, but not for a Rigoletto performance.
We very much appreciated the following cast:
Viktor Aleksov, wonderfully singing as the Duke of Mantuva, his voice is first class for the role as the Duke, - to my oppinnion. A wonderful Vytautas Juozapaitis in the titelrole, in a misunderstod costume - a yellow tutu - in the first act, which at least has notthing to do with the libretto. Gilda was excelent and very beautiful sung by Irena Zelenkauskaite.
Eugenius Vasilevskas outstanding as Conte de Monterone, that reminded me of the vocal grandiosity of Ingvar Wixell. Inesa Linburgyte was singing beautiful as Maddalena, but was looking as she could be a drag.
The orchestra and choire was excellently playing and singing, we really enjoyed many of the famous choire parts, and the choire was good walking in too many steps, the choregraphy arrangements was well functioning. The evenings conductor was the excellent Martynas Staskus.
Coming to the final act, the stage arrangement was functioning well, but for us, - too black.There were no light in the end of the black tunnel.
We didnt like the moving green black video projections.
Henning Hoholt, hoeholthus@c2i.net
Rigoletto in Copenhagen
and
Rigoletto in Oslo
