“La Donna È Mobile” and the Curse: Verdi’s Rigoletto Revived
Excitement for the curtain-raiser of San Francisco’s cultural season poured in, as the crowd stepped into the War Memorial Opera House where red and burgundy flowers were arranged as cynical clown faces across the balcony rails of the opera house and in the lobby. Guiseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto opened San Francisco Opera’s 103rd season on the night of Friday, September 5th.
With a prominent place in the canon, Verdi is well regarded as a composer and storyteller that dramatized power, morality, and human condition. Operas serve as cultural touchstones with enhanced storytelling through the drama and the music. As one of the most celebrated pieces in history, the 1851 opera, Rigoletto, is no exception.
The story of Rigoletto is centered in the sixteenth-century on a morally complex anti-hero, Rigoletto, a deformed, hunchbacked court jester, whose daughter’s tragic death exposes the corruption of the powerful. Rigoletto often gets carried away as he amuses the Duke of Mantua by hurling insults at courtiers and mocking their suffering, sometimes, with cruelty, even though he knows the Duke is a careless and merciless womanizer. Rigoletto’s cruelty causes a curse to be laid on him by Count Monterone whose daughter is dishonored by the Duke. Rigoletto’s beautiful and innocent daughter, Gilda, fell victim to the seductive ruler, who abuses women with his charm and lies. Rigoletto’s attempted revenge on the Duke ends with the ultimate tragedy, as Gilda’s blind love for the Duke makes her willingly sacrifice her life to save the Duke from being killed by Rigoletto’s hired assassin Sparafucile.
There are several famous arias from this opera, and the most universally recognizable has to be “La donna è mobile” (‘Woman is fickle’). Rapid and energetic, ‘La donna è mobile’ is an impossibly catchy tune with the irresistible buoyancy. Ironically, as a celebrated entertainment in the 19 th century, it carries blatant confidence without conscience, provoking reflection in the 21 st century as it collides with our cultural debate of gender-based power plays and inequality masked by charisma and charm. Music director Eun Sun Kim leaned into the bright and breezing cynicism with sinister simmering beneath; contrasted with the looming weight of the curse, such beauty in music carries a striking darkness.
The international cast includes Amartuvshin Enkhbat, the Mongolian Baritone who will have played the title role for over 120 times after the conclusion of the current production. Enkhbat possesses the musical and dramatic power in portraying an aggressive jester yet a deeply loving and protective father tormented by hatred and revenge. Adela Zaharia, the Romania Soprano, whose supple and shimmering voice grows Gilda’s character from girlish innocence to heart wrenching agony and sacrifice.
Stage and lighting designs frame the storytelling in a dramatic, uncanny and melancholic setting with high contrasts. Michael Yeargan’s staging, inspired by Italian Surreal artist Giorgio de Chirico’s cityscape painting, consists towering arcades, empty alleyways, and flat buildings with hollow windows, etched in ominous elongated shadows under Justin Partier designed stark red, green, blue, purple and yellow lighting, creating visual echoes of the curse, drama and tragedy. The contrast between light and shadow mirrored the opera’s moral polarity: charisma and cruelty intertwined, beauty sacrificed for brutality.
“La donna è mobile” and the curse, Verdi wraps cynicism in gleaming musical charm, tying together mockery, hubris, fate and tragedy in Rigoletto. Running through September 27, War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco.