[Met Tour] CID:165990



Rigoletto
Opera House, Chicago, Illinois, Sun, May 23, 1954 Matinee





Rigoletto (353)
Giuseppe Verdi | Francesco Maria Piave
Rigoletto
Leonard Warren

Gilda
Roberta Peters

Duke of Mantua
Eugene Conley

Maddalena
Jean Madeira

Sparafucile
Luben Vichey

Monterone
Norman Scott

Borsa
Paul Franke

Marullo
Clifford Harvuot

Count Ceprano
Lawrence Davidson

Countess Ceprano
Maria Leone

Giovanna
Thelma Votipka

Page
Sandra Warfield

Guard
Algerd Brazis


Conductor
Alberto Erede







Review 1:

Roger Dettmer in the Chicago Herald American
Rousing ‘Rigoletto’

It was reassuring, above and beyond an impressive musical performance yesterday afternoon, to see how much bolder and more intense the Met’s 1952 “Rigoletto” has become in the short space of one year.


What seemed last May a ponderous and undramatic dress-rehearsal of Verdi’s classic has become now a tightly-knit, at times tempestuous performance. It still does blaze now where formerly there wasn’t even fuel.


If it was rewarding yesterday to discover the company’s production tidied-up and purposeful, it was exciting to observe new control in Leonard Warren’s performance of the title role.


Last year, for that matter, his Rigoletto still was an eye-rolling caricature of Lon Chaney Sr., sung buffo fashion as if the jester were some inevitable cuckold in a comic entr-acte by Cimerosa.


Yesterday, however, one saw and heard a much restrained Leonard Warren. He sang the Gilda-Rigoletto duets, in particular, with a control and belcanto smoothness that touched one to the quick, and hurled imprecations at dukes and courtiers without forgetting (or perhaps suddenly realizing) that Verdi wrote dramatic music, but music first and foremost.


His entire performance was not so beautifully wrought as the finer portions of Act II and III, but it was the best work of a man who yet can be the Scotti of our time, if he’ll fully cultivate self-discipline.


Gilda was Roberta Peters, so very beautiful, fragile and sometimes even sweet. It was upsetting, though, to note that she’s not now the ingenuous, pitiable Gilda of three seasons ago, but instead a prima-donna coached rather too well in the deportment expected of serious singers on television programs.


Vocally she was edgy, even a little raspy for two acts, though her singing was invariably accurate and articulate. It will be a pleasure, when she is further seasoned and sensitized, to welcome Miss Peters into the front rank of American singers.


The performance, otherwise had noteworthy contributions by Jean Madeira (a Maddalena of stunning natural endowments), Lubomir Vichegonov, Clifford Harvout and Paul Franke.


Only Eugene Conley as the Duke of Mantua tried his constrained best without success. He was yesterday a tired-sounding tenor who strained so much for so little that one’s throat after a while hurt for him.


Intelligent new staging by Herbert Graf is beyond even minor complaint and only Eugene Berman’s new décor for Act II was unarresting



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