Deep down he is a sexual predator, and his ugly, manipulative side was a bit underplayed. The finest singing of the evening was that of the American tenor Joshua Dennis, who brought a ripe, supple tonal quality and a sappy brio to “Questa o quella” and the famous “La donna è mobile” - the latter surely a prime candidate for the most misogynistic aria in opera history.Īs directed by Regan, Dennis’ Duke was arguably a touch too likable. It wasn’t quite Sandra Dee in “Grease,” perhaps, but it wasn’t too far off it.

Lolling on a bed and flirtatiously kicking her heels, Munger made the aria a delightfully capricious interlude. “Caro nome,” the Act One set-piece where Gilda daydreams about the Count’s attractions, was a particular high point. Her occasionally wavery vocalism chimed with the vulnerability of the character, although in the final scene the voice thinned dangerously close to inaudibility. Olafur Sigurdarson is Rigoletto in Verdi’s sinister work performed by the Minnesota Opera.Īs Gilda, the Canadian soprano Marie-Eve Munger cut a more fragile figure. The Icelandic baritone Olafur Sigurdarson brought an oak-like steadiness of voice and considerable nobility of demeanor to his depiction of Rigoletto, the court jester fighting to avenge his daughter Gilda’s seduction by the Duke. This somehow made the stifling degree to which he is hemmed in and hampered by the rigid social boundaries of the Duke’s regime seem even more oppressive than usual. Rigoletto, normally depicted as a hunchback, was boldly re-imagined by director Regan as wearing a leg brace.

Within these murky, claustrophobic confines, armed militias stalked the corridors, impassively observing while a blinged-up Duke of Mantua partied with his all-male band of monied cronies. The 16th-century setting was updated to “now, or a time much like now.” Julia Noulin-Mérat’s sets evoked a drab totalitarianism, the back walls draped with what looked like plastic garden bags. The sense of freshness that Regan brought to one of Verdi’s most familiar operas was palpable.

The piece’s relevance was newly sharpened by the young, New York-based director Austin Regan for the Minnesota Opera’s new production at the Ordway Music Theatre on Saturday evening. For an opera written in 1851, Giuseppe Verdi’s “Rigoletto” presses a lot of contemporary buttons. Political dictatorship, male-dominated hierarchies and women sexually exploited by those in power positions above them.

Verdi opera set during the 5th century