A new and exciting production of Giuseppe Verdi’s famous opera, Rigoletto, is the next title in the highly successful sixth season of The Met: Live in HD from The Metropolitan Opera in New York. This lavish performance will be screened exclusively at Cinema Nouveau and select Ster-Kinekor theatres countrywide, with the first screening on Saturday, 23 March. Verdi’s Rigoletto is directed by Tony Award-winner Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening), who makes his Met debut with this new production, in which the opera’s tragic events move from a decadent 16th century Italian court to the glitzy, depraved setting of the Las Vegas strip in the 1960s.
Inspired by the antics of the “Rat Pack”, Mayer has cast a dynamic line-up of performers including Serbian baritone Željko Lučić in the title role of Rigoletto. German soprano Diana Damrau sings the role of his innocent daughter Gilda. The predatory and womanising Duke, sung by Polish tenor Piotr Beczala, is an amoral lounge singer whose entourage includes the world-weary comedian of the title. Slovakian bass Štefan Kocán stars as the assassin-for-hire Sparafucile and Belarussian mezzo-soprano Oksana Volkova makes her Met debut as his seductive sister Maddalena.
The Italian maestro Michele Mariotti conducts his first company performance of the Verdi masterwork, which features one of the most famous arias of all of opera, “La donna e mobile”. “It’s impossible not to like the new production. It’s wildly entertaining, inventive, strangely funny and yet also deeply sad… Mayer captures both the emotional depth and surface glitter in an audacious staging … The audience whooped with approval at the end,” wrote Bloomberg News.
As the Duke, Piotr Beczala displays a “…big, beautiful tenor with great presence”, and Mayer’s production “…gives a contemporary immediacy to this tale of how power and vice corrupt everything around them… The strong cast of principals carries out the concept with gusto,” wrote The Wall Street Journal. With delayed screenings here in South Africa, in Asia, Australia, Dubai and New Zealand, and encore performances in North America and Europe, the worldwide attendance figure is expected to reach 325 000 for this unique staging of Rigoletto. As always, these grand opera productions, which are made possible by a generous grant from founding sponsor The Neubauer Family Foundation, are filmed at the magnificent Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Home to some of the most talented singers, conductors, composers, orchestra musicians, stage directors, designers, visual artists, choreographers and dancers from around the world, past productions have received great acclaim and gained recognition around the world.
Now, and as it has done since The Met: Live in HD began, Cinema Nouveau continues to give audiences the exclusive opportunity to witness these spectacular, award-winning live broadcasts, with full sub-titles, on the big screen here in South Africa. Don’t miss the limited season of Rigoletto at Cinema Nouveau, with the first screening on Saturday, 23 March at 17:00. The running time of the production is approximately three-and-a-half hours (including intermission).
exclusively at Cinema Nouveau and selected Ster-Kinekor theatres countrywide
