Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto Story

Opera lovers may be put off by the rather lurid DVD cover (as well as the curious title), but this proves to be nothing more or less than a solid provincial performance of the 1851 masterpiece about a court jester whose effort to save his beloved daughter from the attentions of a lascivious duke leads to a tragic end. The piece boasts a wealth of memorable melodies that come across reasonably well in this mounting on a large outdoor stage at the Piazza del Campo in Siena, Italy, while as a whole the performance can best be described as full-bodied but unsubtle and just a bit slapdash. The tempos set by Keri Lynn Wilson are brisker than normal and the accents sometimes harsh, while the Toscanini Foundation Orchestra sounds a trifle thin in places. Perhaps because of the exterior setting, the singing seems geared more toward volume and large-scale effects than vocal sensitivity (this is particularly notable in the case of Marcelo Alvarez's crowd-pleasing Duke, with his two famously tuneful arias—and he also favors some peculiar phrasing). In addition, neither the staging nor the camerawork are ideally crisp. Nonetheless, this Rigoletto is undeniably vivid and while it won't trump competing DVD versions (such as the 1996 Covent Garden production, reviewed in VL-11/02), it's certainly not—as the weird cover might suggest—some sort of travesty. Presented with a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, but no extras, this is an optional purchase. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)