Verdi - Rigoletto / Luciano Pavarotti, Ingvar Wixell, Edita Gruberova, Victoria Vergara, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Riccardo Chailly
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: G. Verdi, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, Wiener Opera PhilharmonikerDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); German (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Italian (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Classical, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 128 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-07-04
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Deutsche Grammophon
Movie Reviews of Verdi - Rigoletto / Luciano Pavarotti, Ingvar Wixell, Edita Gruberova, Victoria Vergara, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Riccardo Chailly
Movie Review: Glad I'm not a real Opera Lover!
Summary: 5 Stars
Real opera lovers are a wee tad finicky, as the one- and two-star reviews of this DVD demonstrate. Real opera lovers seem to have a Platonic Ideal of the opera in their cavernous consciousnesses, a template of what Joe Verdi intended, from which any deviation is risky. Real opera lovers don't take well to 'film' productions of their idolized operas. Even if they are now ultra-pecunious enough to sit in the orchestra, they recall their youthful evenings in 'paradise' (the highest balcony) as the best of their lives, and they need that distant, almost inaudible timbre in the tenor's voice to sustain their enthusiasm. Real opera lovers KNOW whose performance, attested only by repute or perhaps by a tinny recording, was sans pareil for all time.
Me? I'm just a guy who goes to the opera for the fun of it, and I'm ready to be pleased. I'm also a musician by trade, which leads me to cut quite a lot of slack for the professional sisters and brothers, and inclines me to care more about the sounds I hear, the music itself, than about the staging or acting. Yes yes, I know opera as an art aspires to totality, to the sublime unison of drama and music. But realistically, friends, the unison is most often imbalanced: wonderful music, dopey libretto. Can you earnestly argue otherwise? Particularly about the operas of Giuseppe Verdi?
Case in point: Rigoletto! The script is a squalid and improbable melodrama. Without music, it would be snored off the stage. Rigoletto is a horrid little beast, deformed as much in mind as in body, and he's more convincingly gullible than devious. The Duke of Mantua is an odious tyrant. Everyone in the cast is besotted with evil except Gilda, Rigoletto's cloistered daughter, whose purity of being must be taken on faith. The story is grotesque, the characters are grotesque... but the music! ah, the music is celestial! Even the vile assassin is given celestial music to sing. But does any real opera lover ever complain about 'cognitive dissonance'?
I can almost promise you, dear reader, that even if you think you've never seen or heard Rigoletto in your life, you will snap to attention at the Duke's first major aria, and say to yourself "why, I know that music! So this is where it comes from!" And you'll have such epiphanies several more times before the final curtain. It's the Duke's voice you'll remember as you leave the theater, or turn off the DVD player. It's the joyous lilt of the debauched Duke's arias that you'll find yourself singing in the shower. The most essential item in a production of Rigoletto is that the Duke's role be sung superbly, and recorded equally well. Forget any other quibbles: Luciano Pavarotti sang this music, as people said about Caruso, like a God. If you've ever wondered why Pavarotti was venerated, this DVD will answer your doubts. You can decide for yourself whether he could also 'act'. It's an insignificant question.
Ingvar Wixell is almost ludicrously ugly in his make-up as the hunch-backed Rigoletto, and his posturing verges on silliness, but once again, IT'S The Music, Stupid! Wixell's tormented, interiorized vocal art makes emotional sense out of Verdi's twisted musical musings. If the visuals annoy you, opera lovers, just shade your eyes and watch the subtitles.
Coloratura soprano Edita Gruberova soars. That's her job. She doesn't look childish enough for the role, but she conveys her nun-like innocence in her voice, and she sings in tune! Not a minor accomplishment for a Verdi specialist! What's more, she has the musical wisdom to "comp" to Pavarotti in their duets, not to attempt to upstage him. Nobody could upstage Pavarotti in this music.
Okay. I'm almost finished.
Verdi outdid himself in Rigoletto. The music is iconic. Unforgettable. Rigoletto is one warhorse that deserves to be ridden as long as opera houses stand and opera lovers are willing to spend an Afghani's life wages for a single evening in a box seat.
More Verdi - Rigoletto / Luciano Pavarotti, Ingvar Wixell, Edita Gruberova, Victoria Vergara, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Riccardo Chailly reviews:
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Summary of Verdi - Rigoletto / Luciano Pavarotti, Ingvar Wixell, Edita Gruberova, Victoria Vergara, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Riccardo Chailly
This extraordinarily powerful 1983 production may be the best-sung performance by Luciano Pavarotti on DVD, but when acting values are counted in, Ingvar Wixell manages to outshine the tenor star. Verdi gave the Duke two of Italian opera's most brilliant arias ("Questa o quella" and "La donna e mobile"), but he gave the deformed jester Rigoletto a depth and complexity of character that is reflected in music of great variety and enormous emotional impact: the cruel mockery of the opening scene, the self-doubts inspired by his dialogue with Sparafucile, the paternal anxieties and final despair at his daughter's sad fate, and the burning, self-destructive thirst for revenge. All these motives work their way into music of great dramatic richness, variety, and intensity. Wixell rises to its challenges, not only in the title role but in a cameo appearance as Rigoletto's nemesis Monterone. Location filming provides an atmosphere unavailable in staged productions. --Joe McLellanArt House & International DVD Video
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