far the most interesting aspect of next weekend’s production of Verdi’s opera Rigoletto is the name of its conductor, Felix Chiu-sen Chen (陳秋盛).
Chen was the music director of the Taipei Symphony Orchestra (TSO) for 17 years. As such he conducted, and sometimes also directed, numerous Western operas. This was before the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) began staging operas in Taipei, and Chen’s productions, apart from invariably being excellent in themselves, were consequently almost the only Western operas that Taiwan then knew.
Even before taking up his post with the TSO, Chen was one of the leading figures in Taiwan’s classical music world. He taught both Chien Wen-pin (簡文彬), the NSO’s innovative musical director from 2001 to 2007, as well as the same orchestra’s current maestro Lu Shao-chia (呂紹嘉).
Then, in late September 2003, Chen was the subject of articles in Taiwan’s Apple Daily newspaper accusing him of financial irregularity. The Taipei City’s Department of Cultural Affairs, which finances the TSO, felt it appropriate to instigate an investigation. Soon afterwards Chen offered his resignation, and many believe he was told he had to do so.
While all this was going on, Chen and the TSO were preparing a major opera production, Richard Strauss’s Salome, in the National Theater. At the end of the last performance Chen was on stage, along with the cast, receiving the applause of the audience. I watched astonished as half the TSO musicians stood up and offered him red roses, while the other half sat immobile in their seats. Chen moved from the TSO soon afterwards, and the orchestra, beset by seemingly endless problems over the appointment of its subsequent music directors, never appeared to return to its former eminence, leaving the NSO as the unchallenged leader in the field.
According to many in Taipei’s classical music scene, not a shred of evidence involving Chen in any wrongdoing was ever discovered. He meanwhile returned to university teaching, making occasional appearances here and there as a guest conductor.
Now, suddenly and unexpectedly, Felix Chen is back conducting an opera for the TSO. Things appear to have run full circle. Whatever the reason for this extraordinary turn of events, it constitutes an exceptionally welcome development.
So then, to Rigoletto itself. When the TSO last staged it, under Chen in the National Theater more than 10 years ago, the production was distinguished by an amazing effect, a shooting star that curved down across the sky at the end of Gilda’s Act Two aria Caro Nome (“Dear Name”). No information is available at the time of writing as to what kind of production we can expect at the Metropolitan Hall (城市舞台) next weekend. But there are hints.
The director, Robert Lummer, has issued a statement in which he gives it as his opinion that the heroine, Gilda, is the victim of an oppressive father, the hunchback Rigoletto, and that her tragedy is, in effect, his fault for denying her her sexual freedom. This is supported by a reference to the writer of the Frankfurt School much venerated by the academic post-structuralist theoreticians, Theodor Adorno. In order to assess this position, it’s necessary to look at the opera itself.
Rigoletto is based on a stage play by Victor Hugo called Le Roi S’Amuse (“The King Has a Good Time”). It was an attack on the sexual profligacy and exploitation of his female subjects by a French monarch, and was sufficiently controversial for Verdi to be forced by the censors in Italy to move the action of his opera into the Renaissance past, and to make the ruler a duke from a dukedom that no longer existed.
Verdi responded by penning one of the most vigorous, tuneful and dramatic operas ever written. Nothing can match its compelling, high-energy rhythms, its melodic profusion and its melodramatic situations. The high-point is the famous quartet in the final act where, during a nighttime thunderstorm, the Duke attempts to seduce a professional assassin’s sister, watched through a window by Rigoletto and his daughter Gilda, an innocent girl who sincerely believes the Duke loves only her.
All opera houses have Rigoletto in their repertoires, and it has been the vehicle for innumerable world-famous soloists, from Caruso to Callas.
In brief, the plot is as follows. Rigoletto is the court jester for the Duke of Mantua. He helps mock the fathers of the girls the Duke effortlessly seduces, but has himself a daughter, Gilda, who he keeps hidden away in his house. The courtiers think she must be his mistress and so decide, as a joke, to capture her and bring her to the Duke. But she has already met him, and fallen in love with him, at church, when he told her he was a poor student. Once imprisoned in the court, Gilda continues to love the Duke, so Rigoletto decides to show her what he is really like, and pays an assassin, Sparafucile, to murder the Duke on the same evening.
If anything, then, Rigoletto is presented as the main object of sympathy, or at least an object of sympathy equally with his daughter. The current director’s inclination, as outlined in his pre-production statement, to make Gilda the victim of an oppressive parent, could be an instance of the determination to find some fault in society at large that characterizes the critics of the post-structuralist academic school. But it would be wrong to pre-judge this production. All will be revealed in Taipei’s Metropolitan Hall next Friday night.
The part of Rigoletto will be sung by the South Korean baritone Gerard Kim who currently works as a leading operatic soloist in Innsbruck, Austria. It’s a notoriously difficult role, and surprise was expressed recently that Placido Domingo, in his new manifestation as a baritone, will be singing it for the first time at the age of 69 — as it happens, over the same weekend as this Taipei production.
Gilda will be sung by the Russian soprano Natalia Sharay, while tenor Charles Kim will be the Duke. Both can be heard on YouTube, Sharay singing Caro Nome from next weekend’s opera, and Kim in vigorous voice in some extracts from Wagner’s opera Lohengrin. Hsieh Ming-mou (謝銘謀) is Sparafucile and his daughter Maddalena is performed by Weng Jo-pei (翁若珮)
This should be a production well worth catching. Metropolitan Hall on Taipei’s Bade Road (八德路) is an attractive venue, of medium size, and with an auditorium that doesn’t swallow up un-amplified voices in an over-large space. No one in the audience is very far from the stage, and the TSO has a history of putting on imaginative operatic events there, including Hansel und Gretel in 2007 and Gianni Schicchi in 2008. The TSO’s offices and rehearsal rooms are next door, and as a result Metropolitan Hall is in many ways the orchestra’s home base.
Rigoletto will be sung in Italian with Chinese subtitles. Performances are next Friday evening at 7pm (note the early start), and next Sunday afternoon at 2:30pm.
So, both Rigoletto and Felix Chen return to the TSO next weekend. On both counts this is wonderful news indeed.
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