Rigoletto

Verdi's opera Rigoletto (1987) was directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. Ponnelle was a brilliant operatic director. He directed many operas on stage, almost always to great critical acclaim.

What makes this Rigoletto different is that it's not a filmed opera performance. It's a movie, where Ponnelle can use his talents to embellish the great voices in the cast.

The excellent Swedish baritone Ingvar Wixell stars in the title role. The Czech Nightingale, Edita Gruberova, portrays Gilda, and Luciano Pavarotti is the Duke of Mantua.

If you know opera, you'll love this movie. If you don't know opera, you'll love this movie. This is the greatest opera on film that I've seen. It has a very strong IMDb rating of 8.1. I thought that it was even better than that and rated it 10.

But this is not an Opera filmed on a theater. It is a movie. As such the scenes are not of a theatrical production and many are in exteriors. You will not see the Orchestra pit nor the Maestro.

This requires singers that are also good actors. Pavarotti, not always a good actor in the stage, comes out superb, but the best acting performance is Ingvar Wixell, as Rigoletto.

The female roles are very inferior. Edita Gruberova is totally visually inadequate for the role of Gilda, She looks like an old witch, and totally ruins all her scenes. Madallena is a bit more credible as a "putanna", with some feelings.

Pavarotti and the entire cast are superb in this beautifully filmed opera by Giuseppe Verdi, the world's finest composer of operas. The coloratura soprano is particularly spectacular with her perfect pitch. The title role is well-enacted and well-sung. The entire production is as perfect as one could expect.

A masterpiece of cinematography!

I like the good things in life as much as anybody, I suppose, but until about five years ago, opera didn't figure into my entertainment choices. Oh, I made a few attempts to learn what all the fuss was about; I'd watched several television productions -- notably parts of Wagner's Ring Cycle on public television -- hoping to understand other people's fascination with the art form. And I knew I could like parts of various operas (I remember being surprised as a kid that I actually LIKED the snippets of "Madame Butterfly" in "My Geisha, and I enjoyed the opera scenes in "Moonstruck" and "Pretty Woman"), but unlike the characters in those films, I just didn't "get it."

Then in 1995 I saw a live performance of "Rigoletto" presented by the New York City Opera Company, and that night I "got it." What a wonderful, glorious pageant of color and music and raw Emotion! And I do mean Emotion with a capital E! The key, I think, is that the operatic music allows the performers to over-act freely and believably in a way that would seem silly if their words were just spoken. Everything hinges on the music, of course, and when the music is magical, as it is in "Rigoletto," an opera can be a magnificent entertainment.

A sympathetic family member gave me a laserdisc copy of the 1982 TV production of the opera, and I've found that since I can't see live performances of "Rigoletto" live on a regular basis, this video version is a fine substitute. Luciano Pavarotti is perfect in the part of the Duke; Ingvar Wixell is excellent as his mean-spirited court jester Rigoletto; and Rigoletto's beloved daughter Gilda is played by the somewhat plain-featured Edita Gruberova. The sets and costumes are lavish, and the location shots on the river late in the film bring a heightened sense of drama to the story that could never be matched on a stage.

If you've never seen "Rigoletto," or if you think you don't like or understand opera, I urge you to find this one on videotape and buy it or rent it. If you don't like this, if this production of "Rigoletto" doesn't make you appreciate the power of the art form of opera, well, just give it up and move on to something else. But I suspect, if you're new to opera as I was, that you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Bill Anderson

The magic of an opera is best experienced by being there, and filmed stage productions sometimes are involving enough that the viewer is able to get an emotional handle on the dramatic situations at the same time experiencing some of the great singing voices of our time; odd that this filmed, dubbed version is so distancing, that during the greatest tragic moment in the opera, the camera looks on from a great distance at a boat in a lake with some opulent city skyline in the background; the same happens in the stunning quartet; in a stage production the viewer can see and hear all four characters simultaneously, and get drawn up in the emotional maelstrom created by incipient murder--not in this version, as the camera cuts from one person to another and occasionally catches duos; that said there are excellent reasons to rent this Rigoletto: Underrated Ingvar Wixell is physically and vocally intense, a great and memorable performance of the lead, and the young Pavarottis voice has few rivals (although he distances himself from other singers); there are some fascinating visual concepts in Act I, and the entire opera is easy to follow--but there are better versions on DVD and the 2012 Met Version, set in Las Vegas, is a visual and aural knockout.