Ver­di’s Rigo­letto is a clas­sic, and deservedly so.  The story was based on a Vic­tor Hugo play, adap­ted some­what to avoid cen­sor­ship.  Hugo, by all accounts, was not at all happy that his play was being pla­gi­ar­ised (and by an Itali­an!) until he atten­ded and was amazed by a per­form­ance.  Music­ally it was rather revolu­tion­ary, being more a num­ber of duets than con­ven­tion­al arias.  The standout solo, “La donna è mobile”, was such a hit after the premiere that it was sung on the streets, and more recently it’s eas­ily recog­nis­able in com­puter games, films, and foot­ball chants.  A mov­ing tragedy, and a subtlely caustic social com­ment­ary, Rigo­letto is a good choice for any com­pany.

Etern­ity Oper­a’s mis­sion is to make opera access­ible to every­one, and they do this by sta­ging it in smal­ler, cheap­er ven­ues.  Han­nah Play­house is a ver­sat­ile space to work in des­pite its size.  It was sur­pris­ing, then, that the set was so min­im­al – a couple of con­crete walls, door­ways, a cur­tain.  The cham­ber orches­tra set into the stage at one side looked a little cramped, but seemed cheer­ful.

I assumed that the bare set would be com­ple­men­ted by lush cos­tume, or that it would meta­morph­ose through clev­er prop use.  That nev­er even­tu­ated; the chor­us for the most part wore a mot­ley assort­ment of hooded cloaks and masks, the leads wore noth­ing par­tic­u­larly spe­cial.   The only not­able cos­tume was that of Rigo­letto, who changed from clown­ish short red trousers and sus­pend­ers in the first half to drab browns and greys in the second to reflect the char­ac­ter­’s jour­ney.  There was also some rather nice floor light­ing, cast­ing the play­ers’ shad­ows onto the walls dra­mat­ic­ally at appro­pri­ate points.  Still, I felt the pro­duc­tion was visu­ally want­ing.  Per­haps the design was lim­ited by budget.

Mat­thew Ross dir­ec­ted the orches­tra decis­ively, and they did a pretty good job of keep­ing up.  A smal­ler space can be dynam­ic­ally prob­lem­at­ic for an ensemble, as everything needs to be scaled down.  There may have been a wobble or two from the horns in the quietest moments, but for the most part, they respon­ded well to the addi­tion­al chal­lenge.

The chor­us was sol­id and clear, although they could have had more to play with in the way of props or dir­ec­tion – they mostly stood around, with a little awk­ward dan­cing in the open­ing scene.  Orene Tai stood out as Count Marullo, a small part but an impress­ive pres­ence, and the mur­der­ous brother/sister duo of Robert Lind­say and Jess Segal were lovely to watch and hear.  Lind­say, espe­cially, I hope to hear more of – the part of Sparafucile does­n’t offer much oppor­tun­ity to shine vocally, but his res­on­ant bass voice should prom­ise a bright future.  Segal played Mad­dalena bril­liantly, although she was a little quiet when singing ensemble.

Boyd Owen as the Duke was excel­lent.  His mel­li­flu­ous ten­or was exactly what the char­ac­ter needed and his rendi­tion of “La donna è mobile”, if a little awk­ward in the Eng­lish trans­la­tion, was play­ful and snarky.  He clearly was enjoy­ing a great part and he did a damn good job.

Han­nah Catrin-Jones, though, as Gilda, had a rough­er time.  The part is pretty two-dimen­sion­al, as Gilda’s pur­pose is basic­ally to waft limply about as the over-pro­tec­ted vir­gin daugh­ter of Rigo­letto, but there are oppor­tun­it­ies to show real cour­age and defi­ance.  Sadly, those choices wer­en’t made in this pro­duc­tion, and I can­’t lay that blame on Catrin-Jones.  Her sop­rano is round and clear, and while some of the high­er notes may have been a reach in the first half, she warmed up in the second.

The star, without a doubt, was James Clayton.  He’s just a genu­ine delight to watch, espe­cially in such a rich char­ac­ter.  He’s a bril­liant phys­ic­al act­or, and his Rigo­letto was easy to like, and even easi­er to pity, as what little he had and everything he loved was des­troyed by his own jeal­ous mach­in­a­tions.  Clayton’s beau­ti­ful bari­tone deliv­ery is just as thought­ful as his char­ac­ter­isa­tion, and he’s not afraid to play with it to add depth to the part.  He made the whole pro­duc­tion for me.

I’ve heard a rumour that Etern­ity are fin­ish­ing up, and I think that’s a real shame.  Wheth­er they achieve their goal of bring­ing opera to a wider demo­graph­ic or not, they do cre­ate oppor­tun­it­ies for tal­en­ted sing­ers who might oth­er­wise not move out­side of the chor­us or get to play the most sub­stan­tial parts.   I hope they can con­tin­ue to do that.