NEW YORK, NY.- Bartlett Sher must have logged over a mile inside the Metropolitan Opera as a rehearsal for his staging of Verdis Rigoletto unfolded in fits and starts on a recent morning.
Whenever the singers came to a stop, Sher sprinted. Sometimes up stairs near the orchestra pit, with notes for the cast. Sometimes up the aisle of the auditorium to confer with a team working at consoles and laptops. He had a growing list of things to refine: the sets paint job, the lighting, the layering of a party scenes crowded action.
I need another month, he said, pausing to scrutinize the stage.
Instead, Sher had about two weeks. His Rigoletto opens Dec. 31, part of the Mets annual New Years Eve gala, with Daniele Rustioni conducting and Quinn Kelsey in the title role. This staging, a coproduction with the Berlin State Opera, premiered in Germany in June 2019. But so much has changed in transit that its been virtually rebuilt from scratch down to the wire and under the threat of the omicron variant.
The new Rigoletto by Sher a busy Tony Award-winning director whose work is currently on Broadway (To Kill a Mockingbird) and coming soon to Lincoln Center Theater (Intimate Apparel) is the third to be seen at the Met this century. Piotr Beczala, a tenor starring as the predatory Duke of Mantua, jokingly said in an interview that he is the Duke on duty here: In 2006, he made his company debut with the role in Otto Schenks 1989 production, then originated it in Michael Mayers Rat Pack Rigoletto in 2013.
Thats a lot of turnover for a house where some stagings linger for decades. Peter Gelb, the Mets general manager, said that there is no standardized thinking behind replacing productions. Two, Franco Zeffirellis lavishly traditional takes on La Bohème and Turandot, are not going anywhere, Gelb said. But he has noticed that audiences tend to lose interest more quickly in modern updates such as Mayers Rigoletto, set in 1960s Las Vegas instead of the librettos 16th-century Italy.
Waning interest wasnt the only problem with Mayers production. Its muddled dramaturgy baffled critics, and it developed a reputation as a neon-lit spectacle of little substance. Reviewing the premiere, Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times wrote that the concept was hardly audacious and not even that original. When it was notable, it was as a vehicle for guest artists including soprano Rosa Feola, who had a sensational Met debut as Rigolettos daughter, Gilda, in 2019 and is returning to that role now.
Like Mayer, Sher transposes the action of the opera, but to Weimar-era Berlin a pre-fascist world, he said, of unchecked cruelty, crime and extravagance. He avoided setting the work under Nazi rule, instead opting for the 1920s, the same milieu as the popular TV series Babylon Berlin: a society on the brink of upheaval. The period tracked with the librettos dukes and duchesses while allowing Sher to explore how a corrupt leadership infects a culture, infects how wealth and privilege dominate and squish people below it.
Shers ideas hit a roadblock in Berlin. He had planned for the set to rotate on a turntable, for cinematic transitions and fruitful divisions of public and private spaces. It ended up fixed in place, an art deco nightclub with murals adapted from works by George Grosz, who caricatured the eras corruption and complicity.
It was more static, Sher recalled, and harder to release what was in the music.
Reviews from the German press were harsh, and several were dismissive of Sher as an American. I had my own problems with the production, writing in the Times that Shers treatment of the Weimar Republic came off as more of a context than a concept.
Sher admitted that his Berlin staging had room to grow, particularly in how to communicate the works psychological complexity. But he was happy with it.
I felt it was honest, and it was clear, he said. A good artist should accept the limitations of each iteration of what theyre doing. And this was like the workshop production to fall in love with the work.
He has now had an opportunity to revise his production the way he might during a musicals preview performances, a luxury almost never afforded to opera. (An exception, as it happens, is Intimate Apparel.) His intentions for the Met revival are largely the same, he said, but it will differ from Berlin in crucial ways.
At last, he has his turntable, and thus a much different set; indeed, the first view, during the prelude, is of a grungy brick exterior rather than the explosion of color inside. Gone are the Grosz murals, replaced by searing red marble a problem with the artists estate, Sher said, though the scene-setting curtain, taken from a Grosz painting, remains.
The cast only recently began to rehearse with the rotating nightclub onstage. Earlier, they prepared in a basement studio with only suggestions of it a door frame, a pillar and Sher blocking their movement as he narrated how the set would turn. A copy of Le Roi SAmuse (The King Amuses Himself), the Victor Hugo play that inspired the opera, was on hand for reference. Rustioni was perched on a stool, waving his baton and singing along from memory. (During breaks, he swiveled to the left to study Mozarts Le Nozze di Figaro, which he will lead at the Met beginning Jan. 8.)
Beczala, who was days away from opening Massenets Werther when the Met shut down in March 2020, was back at rehearsals there for the first time since then. And Kelsey, a fixture at the house for over a decade, was bracing for his biggest role yet my first proper lead, he said. Many of the directions Sher gave them during the basement rehearsal were about bringing more transparency to the operas complex opening scene.
Clarity is a hallmark of Shers work, whether the production is Rigoletto or South Pacific. He said its something he strives for to release the power and truth of the opera, and hopefully add to that some layer of meaning of its resonance today.
After a pause, he added with a laugh, No big deal.
That resonance, Kelsey said, is very much present in the production. Its so surprising how that really mirrors a lot of what were feeling in our country now, regardless of what side youre on just the tension itself, he added. More complicated are the dynamics at play among the principal characters. Rigoletto believes that the tragic events that lead to the death of his daughter are the result of a dishonored noblemans curse. But the opera isnt so simple.
I like to say that the Duke is polyamorous, but he hasnt worked out his ethical nonmonogamy, Sher said. He just goes at everything, then drops it in a second, which is really dangerous. Yet Gilda, this poor innocent girl, is already manipulated by the ridiculously overemphatic love of her father, and shes in a washing machine between him and the Duke. The big journey for me is to figure out how to give her some agency over these men who are dominating her.
Behind all this is the score, which opens with the theme of the curse and never really emerges from that darkness. Verdi was so proud of the curse, Rustioni said. You see it repeated, the dotted rhythm coming back when Rigoletto sings. Its like an idée fixe.
Among Rustionis restorations to the opera such as an often-cut cadenza in an Act I duet for Gilda and the Duke is keeping a line of Rigolettos as a string of C notes, rather than ending in a higher E flat, to echo the curse motif.
I think the production is very respectful toward Verdi, Rustioni said. Everything is built into the music, and this constantly changing, rotating element helps to carry the mood.
Sher said that the cinematic movement of his set was his way of achieving a mise-en-scène that ripples through the music and text. Ideally, he added, with enough time you can really get it right. Well see.
One obstacle could get in his way. About 10 days before opening night, the omicron variant was rapidly spreading throughout New York City. Lines snaked around the blocks of testing sites, and panic fueled a run on at-home testing kits. Broadway shows were in a precarious state of anticipation and sudden cancellations, and the storied Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes prematurely ended its run because of breakthrough infections in its cast.
The Met, which hasnt yet had to cancel a performance, has taken what safety measures it can a no-exceptions vaccine mandate, with a booster requirement on the way in January, and twice-weekly testing within the company and Gelb said that until recently he had been extremely confident. Now, he feels a kinship with the hapless Rigoletto.
He has his curse which ruins his life, Gelb said. Were all sort of under a larger curse: We have the curse of Omicron.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.