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Rigoletto

Rigoletto – Cortigiani

February 6, 2025

The title role of Verdi’s Rigoletto is the greatest role ever written for a baritone. That’s saying a lot, given that the composer wrote more great parts for the baritone than any other composer of opera. Of his 26 operas, five have the baritone’s name as their title. All the rest of the composer’s operas […]

Rigoletto in HD – 2022

January 29, 2022

The Met seems to have a problem finding the locale of Verdi’s dark masterpiece. They moved it from Mantua to Las Vegas in 2013. That production didn’t last long; it was replaced this year by one set in the capital city of the Weimar Republic. Why? Who knows? Which site is weirder? Hard to tell. […]

Finale 20 – Vengeance

January 20, 2019

The second act of Rigoletto ends with perhaps the most furious music in all opera. The hunchback jester’s daughter, Gilda, has just been raped by the Duke whom she had fallen in love with thinking he was a poor student until reality intruded with awful suddenness. And worse, she still loves him. The Duke having […]

Recording of the Week – Hvorostovsky as Rigoletto

February 28, 2018

Dmitri Hvorostovsky did not record the Verdi baritone’s summa, Rigoletto, until 2016 – a year after he was diagnosed with brain cancer. This recording was released by Delos near the end of last year shortly before the singer’s death. Rigoletto was not at the core of the great baritone’s repertoire. Of his 182 performances at […]

Recording of the Week – Hvorostovsky as Rigoletto

Finale 15 – Rigoletto Act 2

April 3, 2017

Rigoletto is an opera the marks the beginning of a new style of composing for Verdi. It is a work filled with invention, but the end of Act 2 reprises the Verdi of Nabucco and Ernani. Just belt it out and sweep the audience away. Of course, no one sings the concluding duet between Rigoletto […]

Rigoletto in Santa Fe

August 26, 2015

The Santa Fe Opera presented Verdi’s Rigoletto on August 25, 2015. The virtues of Verdi’s masterpiece are too well known to warrant repetition. The success of this opera depends on the interpretive powers of its three principals and the leadership of the conductor. But it is the baritone who sings the title role who carries […]

Tutto Verdi: Rigoletto

May 12, 2014

With its 2008 production of Rigoletto Parma’s Tutto Verdi series reaches the first of Verdi’s mature masterpieces. Rigoletto is performed so often and is therefore so familiar to opera goers that its utter originality is obscured by its ubiquity. The title role is the supreme test for an “Italian” baritone. I can add little to […]

Rigoletto in HD

February 17, 2013

The Metropolitan Opera’s 847th performance of Verdi’s masterpiece was telecast in HD yesterday. It’s 6th on the company’s list of most frequently staged operas. Though Verdi was only 37 when he wrote Rigoletto it was his 17th opera. Over the remaining half century of his life he would write only 11 more. Rigoletto was based on Victor Hugo’s play […]

Parmi veder le lagrime

April 11, 2009

Joseph Calleja has generated a lot of favorable comments about his performances at the Met as well as at other houses. The unfortunate vocal collapse of Rolando Villazon has left many proposing Calleja for some of the roles that have been assigned to Villazon at the Met, but which the Mexican tenor is almost certainly […]