Opera Review: RIGOLETTO (LA Opera)

STERILE STAGING, FEROCIOUS VOICES:
LA OPERA’S RIGOLETTO BLEEDS DESPITE ITSELF

Let’s be clear from the jump: this isn’t your Nonna’s Rigoletto. No 16th-century Italian costumes, no jester’s hump wobbling around the ducal funhouse. Just an elegantly brutalist playground for testosterone, tuxedos, and trauma. Director Tomer Zvulun, who seems to believe subtlety is for string quartets and not opera stages, drags Verdi’s tragic clown into an unnamed locale in the 1930s—a move that feels less like interpretive insight and more like an Instagram filter. Bleak, moody, and not entirely necessary.

Quinn Kelsey (front) as Rigoletto and Blake Denson (rear) as Count Monterone

It helps to recall, especially for newcomers or those gripping the Act I synopsis like a lifeline, that Rigoletto is Verdi’s jet-black tale of a court jester who mocks the victims of his lecherous boss, the Duke of Mantua, and is then cursed by one of them. Said jester, the titular Rigoletto, is hiding a daughter, Gilda, whom the Duke promptly seduces and discards—setting off a revenge plot that goes tragically awry.

Quinn Kelsey (far right) as Rigoletto

That original darkness was no accident. Written in 1851, Rigoletto marked Verdi’s leap into mature drama. His first collaboration with librettist Francesco Maria Piave, and his first serious tango with censorship. The Austrian Empire’s censors balked at a lustful monarch (originally Francis I of France) and forced Verdi to mask the whole affair in imaginary Mantua. But camouflage didn’t dull the blade. Here began his “trilogy of doom” (Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, La Traviata), where melody bared its teeth and emotion dropped the powdered wigs.

The men of the LA Opera Chorus

Verdi gave us drama with claws—a revolutionary work that demanded visceral, emotionally honest staging to match its musical urgency. Yet Zvulun’s production for LA Opera, which opened last night at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, seems to fight against this inherent rawness. The set, a hulking slab of fascist neo-classic geometry by Erhard Rom, looks like it was designed by someone gunning for a stage version of Bertolucci’s The Conformist. All right angles, no heart. Fantastic in Instagram photos, useless for evoking place. That strategy might lend itself to the bleak expressionistic Wozzeck, less so to a Verdi opera. Robert Wierzel‘s lighting drenches it in chiaroscuro; Striking? Yes. Clarifying? Not so much.

Quinn Kelsey (center) as Rigoletto and Vinícius Costa (hands raised) as Count Ceprano

Jessica Jahn‘s costumes feel like the result of handing a credit card to someone who binge-watched Visconti’s The Damned. Tuxedos with white masks for the henchmen and flapper dresses for the women. At a distance, arresting. Up close, everyone seems to have wandered in from productions of Cabaret, The Great Gatsby, and Marat/Sade.

Quinn Kelsey as Rigoletto

Another problem with the production: Zvulun has decided to erase Rigoletto’s physical deformity almost entirely. In this version, he’s monstrous only in the emotional sense. A choice that might earn points in a post-Freudian seminar at UCLA but undercuts the opera’s deeper argument about visible difference and how society punishes those who carry it. Everyone looking like a Hugo Boss mannequin with a backstory, the cruelty turns abstract. The sting is gone. What remains is style without scars. This isn’t just a visual adjustment—it’s a cultural erasure. Verdi’s jester isn’t merely wronged; he’s marked, punished in body as well as in spirit. Scrubbing that away flattens the opera’s original indictment of how societies ostracize what they deem grotesque. In a world that still fears visible difference, this choice feels more evasive than evolved.

Quinn Kelsey as Rigoletto

The production doesn’t shed new light on why Gilda, Rigoletto’s daughter, makes a life-changing choice at the end of the opera. It doesn’t try to explain how paternal love, overprotection, and vengefulness tangle within Rigoletto to hire an assassin.

Lisette Oropesa as Gilda and René Barbera as the Duke of Mantua

James Conlon steps up and slaps the defibrillator onto Verdi’s corpse. He raises his baton and reminds the room that Rigoletto doesn’t need saving—just brains and guts at the podium. His reading of the score is tight, alive, and refreshingly unsentimental. The orchestra snaps into action, coiled and precise, then opens like a flower beneath Gilda’s lines. When Rigoletto hurls curses, the brass bite back. When Gilda dreams, the strings sigh with her until the dream is crushed. Not flashy baton-twirling. It’s structural support. Without him, this Rigoletto would collapse under the weight of its own ideas.

Quinn Kelsey as Rigoletto and Lisette Oropesa as Gilda

Quinn Kelsey‘s performance in the title role towers—visually and vocally. Broad shoulders, granite jaw, a shining dome of a head—he looks monumental before he sings a note. His baritone arrives rough and burnished, textured with fear, pride, and fatherly panic. He refuses to sentimentalize Rigoletto or play him as a monster. Instead, he builds a character from the inside out, stitching together “Pari siamo,” “Cortigiani,” and “Vendetta” into a full human being. His voice carries weight without force, and he phrases with a musicality that rides the conductor’s pulse. His “Cortigiani” is a desperate, furious prayer, not just a tantrum. A man unraveling.

Quinn Kelsey as Rigoletto and Lisette Oropesa as Gilda

Lisette Oropesa‘s Gilda might shimmer, but there’s density beneath the sheen. She’s not some glittering victim. She’s a girl in freefall. Her big aria “Caro nome” was as delicate as it was driven. Her second act lament broke open like a wound. There’s a Callas-like depth to her lower register that gives Gilda weight and force, even as she makes devastatingly bad decisions. When she shares the stage with Kelsey, the production’s chill lifts. Their scenes together feel like a separate opera, one where human stakes still matter.

René Barbera as the Duke of Mantua

René Barbera plays the Duke with a velvet knife of a voice and a smile that curdles the longer you look at it. His “Questa o quella” glides in with the nonchalance of a man who has never had to wait for anything, each note flicked off like an afterthought—light on its feet but never trivial. There’s brightness, yes, even mischief, but it’s edged with something colder. He draws the line between seducer and sociopath with a surgeon’s calm, never reaching, never overstating. When “La donna è mobile” (the opera’s best known aria) arrives, he wraps it in golden tone and easy phrasing, letting it dazzle before hollowing it out into something spectral by the finale. It fades like a perfume that turns bitter once the wearer is gone. Barbera finds something recognizably human in the Duke—but maybe a little too human. It makes the violence almost plausible. That’s either brilliant or deeply unsettling. Or both.

Not every role here is expansive, but some burn hotter in a short span.

Peixin Chen as Sparafucile

Peixin Chen delivered an impressive performance as the assassin Sparafucile, bringing both vocal authority and dramatic nuance to this menacing role. His darker timbre avoided an overly covered quality, allowing brightness and some humility into his villainy. His excellent low notes and stentorian delivery provided the requisite vocal range for Sparafucile while maintaining an arresting stage presence. Chen’s subdued yet compelling interpretation demonstrated his ability to balance the character’s sinister nature with subtle dramatic layers.

Sarah Saturnino as Maddalena

LA Opera resident artist Sarah Saturnino makes her mark as Maddalena, Sparafucile’s sister. Where Gilda was all luminous heartbreak, Saturnino brings smoke and salt. Her presence feels lived-in, unpolished, dangerous. Her mezzo in “Bella figlia dell’amore” adds tactile heat, grounding the quartet with earthy resonance. She doesn’t play the vamp. She plays a woman who knows the cost of survival as she lures Sparafucile’s victims to their doom.

Sarah Saturnino (far left) as Maddalena, with dancers

And this Maddalena is just the beginning. I’ve watched Saturnino’s rise with growing fascination. Though I missed her acclaimed Carmen at Opera Santa Barbara (my loss entirely), what she does with Maddalena’s brief stage time confirms my opinion: LA Opera should cast her toute suite as Bizet’s cigarette girl. She brings exactly what Carmen demands—smoldering physicality, theatrical instinct, and that dark-honey mezzo that makes freedom sound like both seduction and threat.

Sarah Saturnino as Maddalena and René Barbera as the Duke of Mantua

Just as striking is 29-year-old baritone Blake Denson. He delivered a convincing portrayal of the geriatric Count Monterone, combining vocal power with dramatic intensity. His forceful presence stalked the stage, with venom and vengeance present in his voice and visage, while his roaring baritone with a sound that boomed to the back of the house perfectly suited Monterone’s role as the wronged nobleman whose curse sets the tragedy in motion. Though brief, Monterone’s confrontation with Rigoletto is the pivotal moment that drives the entire opera forward, making Denson’s excellent performance essential to the production’s dramatic impact.

Blake Denson as Count Monterone and Quinn Kelsey as Rigoletto

Bass-Baritone Vinícius Costa as Ceprone had a mellifluous low range with strong bottom notes. His dark, rich timbre suggested both aristocratic dignity and moral corruption. He was cast against type because his good looks did not square with the role of a cuckolded husband.

Nathan Bowles (far left) as Borsa and Vinícius Costa (far right) as Count Ceprano.

LA Opera resident artist Nathan Bowles as Borsa, one of the Duke’s henchmen, showed comic chops and a strong tenor voice. Madeleine Lyon as Giovanna, Gilda’s duplicitous chaperone, showed the warmth and moral ambiguity required for the role but also found humor in it. Her creamy but clarion-clear mezzo was impressive.

The men of the LA Opera Chorus threw themselves into the courtiers’ antics with vigor, managing to sing with lightness and zip with perfect diction.

Quinn Kelsey as Rigoletto

Underneath the smoke, sequins, and slick geometry, there’s a sermon trying to break through. Zvulun doesn’t direct so much as annotate—footnotes for fascism, marginalia about decay. Occasionally, the pages bleed. Mostly, they smudge. The message is sleek, but the gut punch is dulled. Verdi’s tragedy flattens under the pressure of being turned into a thesis. Rigoletto without pain is just a cold warning label in a sharp suit.

Lisette Oropesa as Gilda

My critical opinion aside, operagoers who, unlike me, have not seen too many Rigoletto productions to count, will not find fault with the production, not having other versions to compare it to. First-timers will still experience Verdi’s masterpiece in technically accomplished form, with world-class voices navigating emotional depths that transcend directorial choices. Newcomers might actually welcome those stark visuals—like cliff notes for power and corruption without the usual operatic frills and furbelows. What I dismiss as heavy-handed might serve others as a necessary guide through Verdi’s moral labyrinth, flagging the moments where justice fails and privilege triumphs. Judging by the rousing standing ovation on opening night, the audience seemed more than willing to meet the staging on its own terms. By all appearances, they liked what they saw.

Quinn Kelsey as Rigoletto and Lisette Oropesa as Gilda

For me, though, this production initially triggered deep skepticism, only to compel my attention. Not because of the concept, but in spite of it. Maestro Conlon keeps the lifeblood moving. Kelsey, Oropesa, Barbera, and the rest of the exceptional cast deliver the emotional truth the staging withholds. No matter how many times directors try to graft a new skeleton onto Verdi’s opera, the thing keeps getting up and singing.

Quinn Kelsey as Rigoletto

You can ignore the set, survive the concept, and forgive the made-for-TikTok staging. But miss this orchestra and these heavenly voices, and you’re skipping the part where Rigoletto still lives, snarling and singing through the concrete.

René Barbera as the Duke of Mantua

Verdi built Rigoletto to wound. Not decorate, not posture, but hurt—honestly, viscerally. No amount of brutalist chic or mob cosplay can substitute for that sting. What survives here is not the concept, but the combustion: between singer and conductor, between melody and moral collapse. Strip the staging down to scaffolding and street clothes, and the music still bleeds. That’s the paradox of this production. It forgets the flesh, but the voices refuse to.

photos by Cory Weaver

Ainadamar
LA Opera
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 North Grand Ave.
2 hour and 35 minutes with one intermission
in Italian with English subtitles
ends on June 21, 2025
for tickets, call 213. 972.8001 or visit LA Opera

for more shows, visit Theatre in LA