THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 5, 1995 TAG: 9510050614
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CRAIG SHAPIRO, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 159 lines
THE SUFFOCATING love of a devoted father. Moral corruption in high political circles. Contempt for the ruling class, disdain for the underclass. The thin line separating good and evil.
Set ``Rigoletto'' in New York in the Roaring '20s or, as first staged 144 years ago, in the court of a 16th century Italian nobleman - the realities that made Giuseppe Verdi's tragedy one of the defining works in opera are the reasons it remains relevant.
Peter Mark knows.
In 1984, the Virginia Opera Association broke with tradition and moved the story to New York's Little Italy. Costumes were borrowed from ``The Godfather'' and Rigoletto, still a hunchback, became a sidekick to the duke and his henchmen. Although a few members of the Italian-American community cried sporco, it was a daring, innovative production that garnered the VOA national headlines and played to standing-room-only audiences.
Virginia Opera returns the jester to his original role and turf Friday night at the Harrison Opera House.
``It's really a timeless story,'' said Mark, the company's general director. ``When you consider when it was conceived and written, and here we are in 1995 and it's still being played all over the world, you've got to recognize that there's something universal about the subject.
``When you see this production, you'll understand the passions involved without the location having to be changed. I don't think the audience needs to be hit on the head that way to understand that these issues are still relevant and that the moral issues are complicated.''
Rigoletto, court jester to the Duke of Mantua, is not a hero. Bitter and vengeful, he gets away with mocking the courtiers because he has the duke's favor. Nor is the duke a saint. He boasts openly of his sexual conquests, among them the daughter of an elderly count. When Rigoletto taunts the count, he responds with a curse that leaves the jester shaken.
Rigoletto's saving grace is his consuming love for his daughter, Gilda, whom he confines to their home, shielded from the world he hates. The courtiers, who despise Rigoletto for his deformity as well as his tongue, hear that he is keeping a mistress. They abduct the girl and present her to the duke. The jester hires an assassin to kill the nobleman, but, in a series of tragic twists exclusive to opera, it is Gilda who is murdered.
``It's really a very modern story,'' Mark said. ``In our professional lives, we are all frequently at odds with our personal efforts or our family life. The key is the music: In the hands of a great composer, it can universalize an experience that may be time-specific. You live through it in the music.''
There is no question that ``Rigoletto'' includes some of the most memorable melodies in the repertoire: ``La donna e mobile,'' ``Caro nome,'' ``Questa o quella'', the third-act quartet sung just before Gilda's death.
But it was Verdi's treatment of the music that made ``Rigoletto'' his masterwork. He gave it a theatricality, a sense of drama, that differed from the stiff, formulaic operas of the early 19th century.
It changed opera forever and influenced, among others, Puccini, Wagner, Strauss and Gian Carlo Menotti, Mark said.
``Here is a theatrical genius whose language was music but who understood drama so powerfully,'' he said. ``He was extremely demanding; we know that from letters exchanged with his librettist. He could hear the musical tensions. He understood a libretto was not a play. The words were serving a function of the music.''
Vernon Hartman will sing the title role; William Livingston is the Duke of Mantua. Sujung Kim, a native of South Korea, is making her professional American opera debut as Gilda.
Mark first heard her last summer at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, Calif. She has since been named a finalist in the Luciano Pavarotti International Vocal Competition and a national winner in the Metropolitan Opera Council Auditions.
``You know what you hear from auditions,'' Mark said, ``but until all the pieces come together, you don't know the chemistry. The chemistry is superb.''
Vernon Hartman and Rigoletto go way back. He first sang the demanding role when he was 22, just out of prestigious North Texas State.
``Everybody said, `You're crazy.' But I proved to me that I could do it,'' he said. ``I wasn't throwing Nolan Ryan fastballs, but I did it. I did a competent job within the framework of what I was capable of doing. You can't hit a seven-run home run. You can only sing with what you have.
``I didn't rest on my laurels. But nothing ever seemed unattainable after that. As I grew as a singer, I always did a challenging role once a year. Something to push me, to test my limits.''
If Hartman sounds like an ex-jock, there's a reason: He played football in high school - trained in the shotput, too - but gave it up in college when he realized that while he was an average jock, he could have a career as a singer.
An animated, outgoing man, the 43-year-old baritone looks a little like Jay Leno without the jaw. Sports still figure in his life; he was wearing a Boston Red Sox jersey with Ted Williams' No. 9 on the back.
``It's one of my axioms that singing is at least equally an athletic endeavor as an artistic endeavor,'' Hartman said. ``There are many parallels to how a baseball pitcher works. We work in intervals as far as performing, but we continue to maintain a regimen every day.
``It's very similar, particularly for a baritone, which is kind of like being a relief pitcher. Because we work in the normal vocal range, we're able to work more often with less wear and tear than a tenor, which is more like a power starting pitcher. We can throw our out pitch more often.
``We also condition our legs very much like a pitcher does. The power of a singer as well as a pitcher comes from the legs. If your legs are locking on you, you've got no anchor as a singer. There are all these parallels.''
That same attitude served him in college. Aware of the odds of becoming a professional singer, Hartman studied radio and TV broadcasting, and later was occasionally color analyst for North Texas State, the Texas Rangers and the Dallas Chaparrals of the old American Basketball Association.
``When I drove into town and saw Scope, I said, `That's where Julius (Erving) played.' ''
His training also helped with Rigoletto, a role Hartman has returned to often in a career that includes regular appearances at the Metropolitan Opera. But it was the birth of his own daughter, now 13, that put the character in perspective.
``We're often afraid to play irony on stage,'' he said. ``But irony and the overall scope of true human tragedy - the weight of life forces playing down upon characters, degrading them, dragging them down - and the nobility that comes through . . . that's great novel; that's great drama; that's great theater; that's great anything.
``That's the full transcending thing of theater and life, and `Rigoletto' is loaded with that.'' ILLUSTRATION: VICKI CRONIS COLOR PHOTOS
Peter Mark, general director of Virginia Opera, says ``Rigoletto''
is a timeless story.
Vernon Hartman plays the title role of Rigoletto the jester, and
Sujung Kim plays Gilda, his daughter, in the Virginia Opera
production.
Graphic
GIUSEPPE VERDI
Born: Oct. 20, 1813 in Le Roncole
Died: Jan. 27, 1901 in Milan
In March 1850, Venice's Teatro La Fenice commissioned an opera
for production during Lent of the following year.
Originally called "La Maledizione," Verdi based his work on
Victor Hugo's 1832 play, "Le Roi s'amuse," which had been banned in
Paris after one performance.
The libretto, by Francesco Maria Piave, was rejected by the
Venetian censor, who objected to its "revolting immorality and
obscene triviality."
Verdi and Piave got around the censor by making the immoral king
a duke, resetting the story in Italy and renaming the opera
"Rigoletto," after its hunchbacked jester-villain-hero.
On March 11, 1851, "Rigoletto" opened to overwhelming success in
Venice. It received over 100 performances during its first season in
Paris.
What: Giuseppe Verdi's "Rigoletto," presented by Virginia Opera
When: 8 p.m. Friday
Where: Harrison Opera House, 160 Virginia Beach Blvd., Norfolk
Tickets: $19 to $68
Additional performances: 2:30 p.m. Sunday and Oct. 15; 7:30 p.m.
Wednesday; 8 p.m. Oct. 13
To order: Call 623-1223; 877-2550 (Peninsula)
by CNB