Friday,
November 02, 2007
Italian Opera Sung with English Supertitles - Sacrilege or Progress ?
The
ANNOTICO Report
Some
people might think that introducing Supertitles to
Italian is "Corrupting" its Purity. I think you do not loose ANY of the
incredible musicality, yet it allows non Italian speakers to better appreciate
the experience. And spread its
accessibility.
Accessible Opera is No Oxymoron
goTriad.com
-
Leslie
Mizell
Special to Go Triad
November 1, 2007
"Rigoletto"
When: 8 p.m. Friday ; 2 p.m. Sunday
Where: War
Memorial Auditorium, Greensboro Coliseum Complex
Tickets:
$5-$50
For the Greensboro Opera Company's production of "Rigoletto,"
Ryvkin, who is Russian, is teaching a primarily
English-speaking cast the fine points of singing in Italian. And as the music
director for the production as well as the artistic director of the company
since 2005, Ryvkin is constantly trying to
communicate to new generations of theatergoers that the old stereotypes of opera
are gone -- if they ever existed at all.
"Opera today is the most all-embracing art form," he says. "It
has drama, sets, lighting, costumes and magnificent, glorious music. It also
has opera singers who look right for their roles and can act. That clich? doesn't
exist today."
Ryvkin also works double duty as the artistic
director of Opera Santa Barbara and will direct "Il Trittico"
and "Tosca" for them in February and March. That company has also
commissioned Stephen Schwartz ("Godspell,"
"Wic ked") to write his first opera, which Ryvkin will conduct in 2009.
For those who are new to opera, "Rigoletto"
is a good place to start, Ryvkin says.
"'Rigoletto' is a wonderful first opera as long
as one comes to it with an open mind," Ryvkin
says.
"Even though it's a traditional and very dramatic story, at its center is
a father-daughter relationship. And I have a daughter, our stage director has a
daughter and the actor playing Rigoletto has two
daughters. We all love them to death, but they begin to rebel at some point,
and this is the opera's message that will resonate with audiences today."
In Verdi's opera, the Duke of Mantua is aided in his womanizing by his jester, Rigoletto, while some of the cuckolded men in his court
want revenge.
Rigoletto's daughter, Gilda, has kept his profession
a secret. Gilda also is kept hidden, forbidden to leave her house except to go
to church. But she has fallen in love with a student she met there
, a man who is actually the duke.
Several noblemen seek Rigoletto's help in kidnapping
the duke's current mistress, and too late he realizes they have taken Gilda by
mistake. In trying to rescue her, all their secrets come out, with tragic
results.
"Rigoletto is a very Shakespearean play in
that no one is truly sympathetic but Gilda,
yet the characters are so three-dimensional that their conflicts are endlessly
fascinating," Ryvkin says.
"Rigoletto" is sung in Italian with English
supertitles. While this is the "flaw" that
turns so many people against opera, Ryvkin says it's
no different than seeing a brilliant French film with subtitles.
"In a drama the director sets the pace and the actors' inflections,"
he says. "But in opera, a great composer has done it for us, gives the
mood and the reflection and the subtext. But there is a lot of freedom left for
the singers and musicians to reveal things within that framework. Expressively,
they do double the work."
Ryvkin is also proud of the Greensboro Opera show
because it's unique to
"Even if you might have been dragged to the show kicking and
screaming," he says, "nine out of ten of you will ultimately be very
moved by the end."
Leslie Mizell
has been covering the Triad's theater scene for more than a decade. Her column
runs weekly in Go Triad. Contact her at LAMizell@aol.com.
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