The fat lady singing or why Rigoletto leaves me cold

Last week (20th November) I went to see the Australian Opera production of Verdi's Rigoletto staring Emma Matthews, Michael Lewis and Rosario La Spina, and it got me thinking about why I enjoy some operas so much more than others and why one would bother going to see this most artificial of art-forms at all. 

Artificial? Well you need go no further than the  old saw: "Opera?, That's where you shoot a guy and instead of dying he sings", to recognize the artificiality of the form. But being artificial is what art's all about isn't? It's all about artifice and so the lack of realism can't really be held against opera. Or can it?

You find your daughter dying in a sack and she sings (of course)...

After many years of watching TV (yes TV), going to the movies and reading books I'm sure that we could all take a stab at answering that question. I think that what most of us want from an opera isn't so very different from what we want from a movie or a TV drama: a sense of involvement with the characters and a feeling of psychological truthfulness -  that is of truthfulness to life.

Opera is different perhaps from other, more constrained art forms, in that it will use whatever it has to hand to convey this: music, dance, costume  - spectacle in short.  

The other ingredient we need to make an opera work is our willing suspension of disbelief . Now  there's nothing new in that insight of course - it applies as much to theatre and the movies as it does to opera. However, the most important factor for me in this suspension of disbelief  is willingness. I hate to feel manipulated even if I am being manipulated.  And if I feel I am being too obviously manipulated by the composer and librettist I will not suspend disbelief and the opera will  fail for me.

So what's the payoff for the opera viewer if all of these factors come together successfully? 

Well, when opera is working for me I know I get to live in the moment, my self-absorption disappears and I have an opportunity to feel strong emotions safely and (to follow Aristotle) to feel a catharsis or purgation of them. Possibly, at the end of  it all,  I'll obtain some  clearer understanding  of what it is to be human viewed with some sense of serenity and detachment  (the Greeks I believe called this state  ataraxia). 

Now I know that's a lot for an art form to deliver I know:  a heightened sense of emotion, catharis, ataraxia but hey we're supposed to take it seriously aren't we?

But what techniques then does opera use to attempt to achieve these ends?  I've already mentioned spectacle psychological realism, and the  induction of  a  suspension of disbelief, but another is the application of liberal quantities of beauty. The conflation of the beautiful with the good is a common human failing and one which the opera composer and librettist abuse quite freely. Beautiful music, beautiful singing, comely artists who act well are all potent disguises which allow the composer and his co-accused the librettist to smuggle in strong emotions under the radar of what we might laughingly call our reason.

So now  let's go off to the opera and see what  it can deliver.

Rigoletto

The characters in Verdi's Rigoletto are either so uniformly detestable or so extraordinarily angelic that I find that one cannot  not engage with any of them at all!

The positions taken towards women in the work, while perhaps typical of the mid 19th century are, anathema to the values of our own times: Gilda (Rigoletto's daughter) is a case in point being more valued as a precious possession by her father rather than as a person; there is also the predictable  offensive conflation of female honour with virginity. This, plus the overblown melodrama of the music at dramatic moments of the action is totally risible. 

The emphasis on the supernatural (the curse of Monterone) rather than human actions and motives being the well-spring of the plot leads to a lack of psychological verity. 

The lack of insight of  the principal character into his own motives and the probable consequences of their actions is also incredible. The shock of the court crowd when they realise that it's Rigoletto's daughter not a mistress that they've kidnapped  sickens - It's as if this sudden realisation makes their actions instantly somehow all more reprehensible in their own eyes than they were just the moment before. 

This, plus the cardboard cut-out nature of the characters: Gilda - so sweet, so innocent, so trusting and so stupid (and so so self-sacrificing) when compared with her father who is all  blind rage and bloody vengeance. Not to mention the Duke who is a character of unsurpassed narcissism. There are dark shadows and bright lights in Verdi's characters but there are no shades of grey!

It's not just that the plot is tissue thin that so much annoys, but that yet again we are made to witness an innocent woman's suffering  as a precondition of our pleasure and to no good end other than  for the sake of our own enjoyment.

And yet, and yet the music can be very beautiful indeed in parts. The duke's "La donna e mobile" is most lovely, but the context in which it is sung makes it indeed a very, very ugly song indeed. And the mental dissonance that this harsh juxtaposition of opposites causes in the audience doesn't seem, on the face of it, to be Verdi's intent. I may be harsh but its as if he once he's written a beautiful song he just doesn't care what use its put to and whether it jars or not.

Thus, this production of Rigoletto didn't work for me, for while it had strong emotions a plenty on display  the only strong emotions it elicited in me were disgust and distaste. The music which is in parts lovely is in equal measure a comic opera caricature of itself. The characters are unbelievable, the social milieu distasteful and the plot is so frightfully creaky that one can see how one's feelings are going to be manipulated ages before the manipulation occurs.

However, this isn't meant to be a criticism of the singers - they sang and acted very well (though one did fear for Rosario la Spina, large man that he is as he climbed the drainpipe to the first floor of the set!) and  I found it hard to accept Emma Matthews' casting as Gilda a girl of 16.

At the end of the performance, I just wanted to get up and leave quickly. I wanted to call the police, bring in the child protection agency, go home  have a stiff drink and a shower to wash it all away and then  try to forget about it because I felt that I  learned nothing from it and that I had witnessed a wanton display of human cruelty, folly and suffering to no good end. Simply to comment that: "all operas are the same - the good-bad girl must die!" doesn't cut it with me.

The Greek poet Aeschylus once wrote that: "He who learns must suffer. Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, and against our will, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God."


 I agree wholeheartedly with Aeschylus and so I feel deeply that  there must be more meaning to and more purpose in displaying human suffering than simply gratifying our base need for entertainment for it is to be excusable. If there isn't, then the performance becomes merely  a kind of pornography of violence. 


Rigoletto learns nothing. At the end he had no insight into how his jealousy and desire for revenge lead to the death of his own daughter - it was the curse of Monterone after all. Gilda is dead for no good reason and at the end of the work the Duke is as ignorant of the the suffering he causes as he was at it beginning. 


For all these reasons, beautiful music aside, Rigoletto as a work fails me and leaves me cold.