Thanks for the heads-up on Rigoletto.

I checked my local listings, and my local PBS affiliate has it listed for 1:00 p.m. next Sunday afternoon (May 26th).

I guess I'm a hard-nosed traditionalist or something, but I really deplore "creative" directors who want to do "something new and interesting" with classic operas. I like the traditional staging of Rigoletto (period costumes, the whole bit) and sometimes get a bit angry at what directorial revisionists are wont to do.

Some years ago, Wagner's four Ring operas were staged by one of these types, who wanted to make some sort of social statement about the Industrial Revolution and its effect on the working class. He had the Nibelungen dwarfs all running around wearing hard-hats, safety goggles, and carrying lunch pails. Wotan wore the traditional eye-patch and carried the traditional spear, but instead of the long cloak, they had him in a black Sherlock Holmes-style greatcoat. Siegfried wore chinos, a plaid shirt and colored suspenders (he looked like he'd escaped from "The Red Green Show"). Ah, c'mon!!

Il Trovatore (The Troubadour) was originally set in Spain in the Sixteenth Century during a conflict between the Prince of Aragon and the Prince of Urgel. Manrico, the tenor, is both an officer in the service of Urgel and a lute-playing troubadour. He and the Count di Luna are bitter enemies and rivals for the hand of the lovely Leonora.

They are unaware that they are brothers. Manrico was kidnapped by the gypsy woman Azucena, whose mother the di Luna family burned at the stake as a witch. She raises Marico as her own son and wants to use him as a tool of vengeance against the di Lunas.

Helluva complicated plot, but some outrageously good singing!

Some "creative director" moved the story from Spain to Italy and updated it to the Garibaldi Revolution in the Nineteenth Century. Instead of armor and 16th century period costumes, they're all dressed in military uniforms, except for Manrico who looks like he's wearing Salvation Army rejects.

In the concluding scene (spoiler alert!), Manrico and Azucena are locked in a tower cell when in walks the Count di Luna and Leonora, who agreed to stay with him if he frees Manrico But she has just taken poison, preferring to die rather than submit to di Luna. There is a batch of singing. The poison acts more quickly than Leonora expects and she slumps to the floor, sings her last, and dies. Di Luna, realizing that he's been had—in traditional versions, orders Manrico taken out and beheaded, forcing Azucena to watch from the barred window. But in the updated version, he takes Manrico out in the hall, draws a revolver, and shoots him.

At which point, Azucena shouts triumphantly that di Luna has just killed the long-lost brother for whom he's been searching all his life. Then she cries, "Mother, you are avenged!!" as di Luna stares in horror.

The singing in this version was marvelous, greatly enhanced by the magnificent voice of baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky as the Count di Luna.

But the costuming and revisionist hanky-panky!??

I look forward to this rendition of Rigoletto. But I really dread the idea of setting the whole thing in Las Vegas instead of Renaissance Mantua—and the costumes and such.

Shudder!!

Don Firth