How many times have I seen and heard Rigoletto...live performance...high def theatre broadcast...television...set everywhere from historic Mantua to sixties Las Vegas to an eighties playboy's condo. This may be the best ever. The whole work is charged with passion and dynamism. Shooting in Mantua was interesting (especially since I have been there and in the opera house where Zeuben Metha conducts the orchestra.) The camera work and staging were excellent. But it was the MUSIC. Verdi would have been proud of such a powerful presentation of his work. This is an unaccustomed role for Placido Domingo and, as always, he shines. (Good Lord, the man is in his seventies and keeps getting better.) Yuliva Novikova as Gilda is full of demure passion and actually looks like a young girl. Metha brings out all the wondrous and complex emotions and subtleties of Verdi's score (maybe his best ever) It is a wonderful production which I enjoyed immensely even though the subtitles on my copy were in French. With this great performance, they could have been in Sanskrit and I still would have loved it. Now to put the audio on a CD so I can listen to it in the car...
Review of Rigoletto a Mantova
