United States Verdi, Rigoletto: Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of San Francisco Opera / Eun Sun Kim (conductor). War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, 5.9.2025. (HS)
An international cast of voices that just wouldn’t quit, an orchestra at the top of its game and a visually compelling production raised the heat in San Francisco Opera’s season-opening performance of Rigoletto.
Music director Eun Sun Kim added Rigoletto to her ongoing project to conduct all of Verdi’s operas. So far, Kim has led exceptionally fine performances of Un ballo in maschera, Il trovatore and La traviata, often drawing out telling details without losing the pace and pulse that drive the music forward. This conductor and this orchestra can certainly make things exciting: even in the subtle, intimate moments, there was no lollygagging – it just felt right.
There were no issues with the orchestra covering the voices. All of the principals impressively deployed enough decibels, without any shouting, to make that a moot point. The most arresting voice belonged to Romanian soprano Adela Zaharia who can make her voice pierce a phrase with steel, only to soften it gently before the next breath in perfect bel canto style. As Gilda, the hidden-away daughter of the titular Rigoletto, she found ways to use her voice and the body language of her tall, lithe figure, to trace indelibly the character’s tragic journey. Her ‘Caro nome’ was a tour de force of emotional excess wrapped in vocal clarity, and every duet and ensemble she was involved in benefited.
As Rigoletto, the perpetually put-upon court jester, Mongolian baritone Amartuvshin Enkhbat made every word shine through in a solidly built sound that rang with power and persistence. It was a textbook example of making this demanding role – at the top of a long list of Verdi’s baritone roles – seem almost second nature. Solo moments, including ‘Pari siamo’ and ‘Si, vendetta’, not only sounded great but made the music tell the story. He played the character with one-dimensional anger, however, hardly softening much even in the intimate father-daughter scenes.
Chinese tenor Yongzhao Yu conveyed the Duke of Mantua’s swagger in body and voice. If his sound wasn’t quite as pronounced as the other voices, there was a sleekness to his lyric tenor that brought sparkle to the well-known ‘Questa o quella’ and ‘La donna è mobile’.
Peixin Chen (who hails from Houston) lavished a rich, polished bass on the role of Sparafucile, twice landing on low notes that flowed effortlessly as he tempted Rigoletto into hiring him to assassinate the Duke. He managed to convey the blade-for-hire’s matter-of-fact danger without overdoing it. American mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges portrayed Maddalena, his sister and partner in crime, with scene-stealing stage presence, and vocally completed the combination of excellent voices that made the third act quartet, ‘Bella figlia dell’amore’, impressive for its suppleness.
Director Jose Maria Condemi injected plenty of eye-catching details into the crowd scenes, including sharp-edged staging of Rigoletto’s mean-spirited back-and-forth with the courtiers in Act I, and a smile-inducing pantomime of the courtiers’ account of their late-night kidnapping of Gilda in Act II (the chorus’s ‘Scorrendo uniti’). Although why, in the second act scene in which Gilda seeks consolation from her father, did they hardly get near each other, let alone touch?
The chorus contributed crisply focused, lively work throughout. In the palace scenes, they were like a multi-headed character. ‘Zitti, zitti’, their hushed chorus outside Rigoletto’s house in the abduction scene, was especially effective.
Rigoletto has a long and distinguished history at San Francisco Opera, mounted in 35 of the company’s 106 seasons, including a stretch of 16 out of 19 years between 1935 and 1954, most of them with Lily Pons as Gilda, Jan Peerce as the Duke and either Lawrence Tibbett or Leonard Warren in the title role. Michael Yeargen’s sets for this production, styled after Giorgio de Chirico’s surreal chiaroscuro landscapes, were made for San Francisco Opera in 1997 and brought back in 2001, 2006, 2012 and 2017. A revival planned for 2020 was shelved by COVID, but the wait was worth it, given the power of the cast, the chorus and the conducting.
Harvey Steiman
Featured Image: Adela Zaharia as Gilda and Amartuvshin Enkhbat as Rigoletto © Cory Weaver
Production:
Director – Jose Maria Condemi
Sets – Michael Yeargan
Costumes – Constance Hoffman
Original lighting – Mark McCullough
Revival lighting – Justin A. Partier
Choreographer – Colm Seery
Fight director – Dave Maier
Chorus director – John Keene
Cast:
Rigoletto – Amartuvshin Enkhbat
Gilda – Adela Zaharia
Duke of Mantua – Yongzhao Yu
Count Monterone – Aleksey Bogdanov
Maddalena – J’Nai Bridges
Sparafucile – Peixin Chen
Marullo – Olivier Zerouali
Matteo Borsa – Samuel White
Count Ceprano – Jongwon Han
Giovanna – Stella Hannock
Countess Ceprano – Caroline Corrales