United States Verdi, Rigoletto: Soloists, Refrain and Orchestra of San Francisco Opera / Eun Solar Kim (conductor). Warfare Memorial Opera Home, San Francisco, 5.9.2025. (HS)
A global forged of voices that simply wouldn’t stop, an orchestra on the high of its sport and a visually compelling manufacturing raised the warmth in San Francisco Opera’s season-opening efficiency of Rigoletto.
Music director Eun Solar Kim added Rigoletto to her ongoing challenge to conduct all of Verdi’s operas. Thus far, Kim has led exceptionally effective performances of Un ballo in maschera, Il trovatore and La traviata, typically drawing out telling particulars with out shedding the tempo and pulse that drive the music ahead. This conductor and this orchestra can actually make issues thrilling: even within the refined, intimate moments, there was no lollygagging – it simply felt proper.
There have been no points with the orchestra protecting the voices. The entire principals impressively deployed sufficient decibels, with none shouting, to make {that a} moot level. Probably the most arresting voice belonged to Romanian soprano Adela Zaharia who could make her voice pierce a phrase with metal, solely to melt it gently earlier than the subsequent breath in excellent bel canto model. As Gilda, the hidden-away daughter of the titular Rigoletto, she discovered methods to make use of her voice and the physique language of her tall, lithe determine, to hint indelibly the character’s tragic journey. Her ‘Caro nome’ was a tour de drive of emotional extra wrapped in vocal readability, and each duet and ensemble she was concerned in benefited.
As Rigoletto, the perpetually put-upon court docket jester, Mongolian baritone Amartuvshin Enkhbat made each phrase shine via in a solidly constructed sound that rang with energy and persistence. It was a textbook instance of constructing this demanding function – on the high of an extended listing of Verdi’s baritone roles – appear nearly second nature. Solo moments, together with ‘Pari siamo’ and ‘Si, vendetta’, not solely sounded nice however made the music inform the story. He performed the character with one-dimensional anger, nonetheless, hardly softening a lot even within the intimate father-daughter scenes.
Chinese language tenor Yongzhao Yu conveyed the Duke of Mantua’s swagger in physique and voice. If his sound wasn’t fairly as pronounced as the opposite voices, there was a sleekness to his lyric tenor that introduced sparkle to the well-known ‘Questa o quella’ and ‘La donna è cell’.
Peixin Chen (who hails from Houston) lavished a wealthy, polished bass on the function of Sparafucile, twice touchdown on low notes that flowed effortlessly as he tempted Rigoletto into hiring him to assassinate the Duke. He managed to convey the blade-for-hire’s matter-of-fact hazard with out overdoing it. American mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges portrayed Maddalena, his sister and accomplice in crime, with scene-stealing stage presence, and vocally accomplished the mix of fantastic voices that made the third act quartet, ‘Bella figlia dell’amore’, spectacular for its suppleness.
Director Jose Maria Condemi injected loads of eye-catching particulars into the group scenes, together with sharp-edged staging of Rigoletto’s mean-spirited back-and-forth with the courtiers in Act I, and a smile-inducing pantomime of the courtiers’ account of their late-night kidnapping of Gilda in Act II (the refrain’s ‘Scorrendo uniti’). Though why, within the second act scene during which Gilda seeks comfort from her father, did they hardly get close to one another, not to mention contact?
The refrain contributed crisply targeted, full of life work all through. Within the palace scenes, they have been like a multi-headed character. ‘Zitti, zitti’, their hushed refrain exterior Rigoletto’s home within the abduction scene, was particularly efficient.
Rigoletto has an extended and distinguished historical past at San Francisco Opera, mounted in 35 of the corporate’s 106 seasons, together with a stretch of 16 out of 19 years between 1935 and 1954, most of them with Lily Pons as Gilda, Jan Peerce because the Duke and both Lawrence Tibbett or Leonard Warren within the title function. Michael Yeargen’s units for this manufacturing, styled after Giorgio de Chirico’s surreal chiaroscuro landscapes, have been made for San Francisco Opera in 1997 and introduced again in 2001, 2006, 2012 and 2017. A revival deliberate for 2020 was shelved by COVID, however the wait was value it, given the facility of the forged, the refrain and the conducting.
Harvey Steiman
Featured Picture: Adela Zaharia as Gilda and Amartuvshin Enkhbat as Rigoletto © Cory Weaver
Manufacturing:
Director – Jose Maria Condemi
Units – Michael Yeargan
Costumes – Constance Hoffman
Authentic lighting – Mark McCullough
Revival lighting – Justin A. Partier
Choreographer – Colm Seery
Battle director – Dave Maier
Refrain director – John Keene
Solid:
Rigoletto – Amartuvshin Enkhbat
Gilda – Adela Zaharia
Duke of Mantua – Yongzhao Yu
Depend Monterone – Aleksey Bogdanov
Maddalena – J’Nai Bridges
Sparafucile – Peixin Chen
Marullo – Olivier Zerouali
Matteo Borsa – Samuel White
Depend Ceprano – Jongwon Han
Giovanna – Stella Hannock
Countess Ceprano – Caroline Corrales
