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Seattle Opera's "Rigoletto" fast-forwards to fascist Italy

By Melinda Bargreen
Seattle Times music critic

SEATTLE OPERA Robert Dahlstroom's set design sketch for Act 1 of Seattle Opera's production of "Rigoletto" includes a pool table.

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Seattle Opera does the vast majority of its productions "in period," in the time and place specified by the composer and the librettist. So when the news came that the company's new "Rigoletto" was to be transposed to Mussolini's Italy, opera fans might be forgiven for doing a bit of head-scratching.

Renaissance Mantua of the 1500s, moving to fascist 1930s Italy? How could this be?

As it happens, the two periods are closer than you might imagine. Stage director Linda Brovsky said her imagination took off in that direction after a talk with general director Speight Jenkins, who told her, "I'm not sure we need to stay within the period (of 'Rigoletto')."

"The budget was tight," says Brovsky, "and I was playing around with ideas. I knew next to nothing about fascist Italy, but a filmmaker friend suggested that the emotional topography of the Duke of Mantua's court and Mussolini's Italy were really close."

And why? Renaissance society was "really dangerous," Brovsky explains, and that is certainly borne out in the libretto of "Rigoletto" — which is full of dark secrets, abductions, murders for hire, royal intrigue and secret enforcers. The more Brovsky looked, the more parallels she saw. In 1930s Italy, aristocrats were often high in fascist circles, with the salons of dukes and counts sometimes serving as the meeting place for secret police. If you weren't a card-carrying Fascist Party member, you were in serious danger.

"It's all about the abuse of power," she says of "Rigoletto."

	Costume design by Marie Anne Chiment for Countess Ceprano for Seattle Opera's production of "Rigoletto."

"I almost never update productions, but I think everyone can relate to these characters in a time that is closer to our own. Some things never change; there always are people who think they are above the law, and people who betray those who are closest to them."

Letting the cast know about the proposed change was interesting, to say the least.

"The actors walked in thinking they would be wearing tights and pumpkin outfits and those fluffy hats," chortles Brovsky.

"But instead of brandishing a sword, they're loading a Beretta. And they're in the same type of building you'd see in Renaissance Italy: they just remodel. Believe me, I've stayed in hotels that haven't changed since the days of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.

"The Mussolini era also works with this opera because Gilda (Rigoletto's daughter, and a pivotal figure in the plot) is kept hidden away at her father's house. Any later in the 20th century, and that wouldn't have happened. But in the book 'Christ Stopped at Eboli,' the writer Carlos Levy talks about this village where a woman would be confined to her room for three years after the death of a husband."

Brovsky threw herself into research for costumes, props and general behavior of the newer period. Would the Duke ride a bicycle? What would the courtiers be drinking? (Conductor Edoardo Müller, who despite his surname is Italian, informed Brovsky: "We invented the martini.")

Updating Seattle Opera's hugely successful "Rigoletto" sets, designed by Robert Dahlstrom, was another worry. Originally designed in 1988, the sets have been used twice by the company — and rented 14 times by other companies, a nice source of revenue that no one wanted to see terminated. Could the sets be updated without ruining their period rental value?

Indeed they could. Seattle Opera's scenic department figured out how to make temporary updates (such as attaching electric lines and period posters to the walls); Dahlstrom also repositioned walls and curtains that allowed for a different look. The extras can be easily removed if another opera company wants to rent the 16th-century Rigoletto set in the future.

Brovsky says the look of the production will suggest "Fred and Ginger" (Astaire and Rogers, respectively), with Marie Anne Chiment's 30s-deco costumes and evening gowns.

"It's far more work doing it this way," says Brovsky, "than doing 'Rigoletto' in period, but the journey — the research — is so much fun. It's been like a treasure hunt, and I keep discovering new treasure."

Melinda Bargreen: mbargreen@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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