Arts & Entertainment
As Lyric Opera Launches New Season, Music Director Talks Timeless Appeal of Verdi’s Passionate ‘Rigoletto’
The Company of “Rigoletto” at the Lyric Opera. (Todd Rosenberg)
Lyric Opera of Chicago kicks off its 70th season this weekend with a vengeance with “Rigoletto,” one of Giuseppe Verdi’s many beloved masterworks.
Based on a play by Victor Hugo, “Rigoletto” tells the tale of a court jester obsessed with avenging his daughter’s dishonor at the hands of a duke.
The music is familiar and downright catchy — Verdi famously forbade his cast from singing the songs or even humming the score until after its 1851 premiere in Venice.
At Lyric, “Rigoletto” features an international cast of singers in a production that promises to be sumptuous. Music director Enrique Mazzola conducts.
An acclaimed Verdi specialist, Mazzola took time out of his busy schedule — the maestro is also preparing Beethoven’s “Fidelio” — to speak with WTTW News.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
WTTW News: I presume you see “Rigoletto” as a fine choice to open the season.
Enrique Mazzola: It’s a great opener. It’s an opera full of contrasts and emotions and it’s deeply Italianate, so I’m very happy to bring my soul and my heart into conducting it.
What does Verdi’s “Rigoletto” offer to a novice audience member?
MAZZOLA: In general, Verdi wrote for the people. He wrote operas with themes that touch everyone. So here we have a story of abuse of power, a story of endless love and sacrifice, so in a way we have extreme sentiments. But when you open a newspaper or see something on TV news, every day there are stories of extreme sentiments. The important thing is to absorb this sort of news coming from the opera with the fact that these views of life are colored with the most beautiful music.
Maestro, talk a little about the music and its mix of power and delicacy.
MAZZOLA: Yesterday at rehearsal with the orchestra and singers and stage movements, I realized how my arm was going so powerfully and the fortissimo [volume] of the orchestra. For the number with the young girl, Gilda, I have to conduct a much softer dynamic to find the delicacy of the voice in the character Gilda. Verdi is someone whose writing very detailed, and very often he goes down to just piano, for expression or mystery or for when singers express a moment of fragility.
Music Director Enrique Mazzola of the Lyric Opera of Chicago. (Joe Mazza)
This is an opera of intensity, revenge, drama – your colleague told me it’s as clearly defined as “Star Wars.”
MAZZOLA: [laughs] Yes, because Verdi wanted to make it clear what is moral, so that the bad are really bad and the good are really good. Although in Verdi, the good are strongly attracted to the bad. So I make you an example, yes? So Rigoletto in the first part of the opera he’s still defending the virtues of the daughter who was abducted. And [his daughter] Gilda, despite seeing with her own eyes the Duke is flirting and ready to have sexual intercourse with another woman, she still loves him. So for Gilda this is all virtue, because her love is so big. But with love she goes into the arms of evil.
Do you see this as Verdi working at the peak of his powers?
MAZZOLA: Yes, but it’s very difficult to find the peak of the power of Verdi. I would say the peak of his power is around [later works] “Aida” and “Otello.” But let’s say with “Rigoletto,” “La traviata,” and “Il trovatore,” he really arrives to be the No. 1. It’s like the tennis player being the No. 19 in the world, and then the No. 7, and then he becomes the No. 1 with this trilogy – “Rigoletto,” “La traviata,” and “Il trovatore” – but as in tennis the difficulty is to remain No. 1, and Verdi was able to be the No. 1 for probably 40 years.
Lastly, one non-opera question. When you want Italian food, do you cook it yourself or find it elsewhere in Chicago?
I’m a fairly poor cook. I can do a very simple pasta, but Chez Enrique is not really recommended. So if I want to eat Italian food, I try to explore. Recently I discovered a new restaurant which is called Il Milanese. The owner is really from Milano and I grew up in Milano, so we were speaking the same language. And then we ate the Italian panini, which in Milano is a long tradition of special sandwiches, and we were sharing our favorite places in Milano. I was very happy.
“Rigoletto” runs Sept. 16 through Oct.6 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
