Just before I lost the wifi connection, I was trying to post this ...
Last minute preparation is in full swing. We just came from backstage where a couple of performers are walking the stage. We had a peak into the wigs and wardrobe room. Great set of red heels was in there.
Now we’re in the lobby drawing curious glances from the swish and swanky.
Lots of lovely beaded bags, cute shoes and every now and then a bit of sparkle, feathers and fur.
Favourite conversation thread:
Guest: What are you doing?
Us: Blogging the opera.
Guest: Oh, blogging.
Walk away.
Us: Giggle and tweet (ok, maybe that’s just me)
Ladies and Gentlemen the auditorium will be opening shortly. We hope you enjoy the performance.
Rigoletto, who is now obsessed with seeking revenge, has plotted with the assassin Sparafucile to kill the Duke. Gilda, who despite everything is still in love with the Duke, pleads with her father for his life. Rigoletto takes her to Sparafucile’s inn and forces her to watch as the Duke, again dressed as a student, seduces Maddalena, Sparafucile’s sister. Gilda is devastated and Rigoletto sends her away while he and Sparafucile finalize their plan to murder the Duke.
Meanwhile, Maddalena pleads with her brother to spare the handsome young student and to murder the hunchback instead. Sparafucile refuses to kill Rigoletto but agrees on a compromise: he will kill the next stranger who comes through the door so as to be able to produce a dead body. Gilda, who has returned, overhears the plan and she decides to sacrifice herself. She enters and is stabbed.
Rigoletto returns to the inn to claim the duke’s body. Sparafucile produces a heavy sack, which Rigoletto begins to drag away. As he does so, he hears the Duke singing in the distance. Frantic, he tears the sack open to find his dying daughter inside. As she dies, Rigoletto cries out, remembering Monterone’s curse.
Alone in his palace, the Duke is upset: when he returned to Gilda’s house he found it deserted. His courtiers enter and tell him how they have tricked Rigoletto, abducted Gilda and left her in the Duke’s chamber. Overjoyed that Gilda is now his, the Duke hurries off to meet her.
Rigoletto enters, desperately searching for Gilda. The courtiers are astounded to learn that she is his daughter, but refuse to take him to her. A Page reports that Gilda is alone with the Duke. Mad with rage, Rigoletto tries unsuccessfully to rescue her and is finally reduced to begging for her release. When a distraught Gilda rushes in, Rigoletto embraces her and orders the others to leave them alone.
Gilda then tells of her abduction and seduction at the hands of the Duke. Monterone is led through the room on his way to execution. Rigoletto swears both he and the elderly Count will be avenged, while Gilda, who loves her betrayer, begs her father to forgive the Duke.
At a riotous gathering, the Duke of Mantua boasts to his guests about his talent with women and especially his excitement over his latest amorous adventure. For the past three months he has been secretly pursuing a young woman he first saw in church.
Seeing the Count and Countess Ceprano, the Duke boldly seduces the Countess while his hunchbacked jester Rigoletto mocks her enraged but helpless husband. The courtier Marullo bursts into the gathering to share the latest gossip: Rigoletto has a mistress! The other courtiers, who all hate Rigoletto, discuss the news while Rigoletto continues to taunt an enraged Ceprano.
The debauchery of the evening is interrupted by the sudden appearance of the honourable Count Monterone, who denounces the Duke for seducing his daughter. Rigoletto delights in ridiculing Monterone as the Duke has him arrested. Turning on the jester, Monterone curses him, leaving him terrified.
Later that night, on the way home, Rigoletto runs into Sparafucile, an assassin. Sparafucile offers his services should Rigoletto ever need them and continues on his way. Forlornly, Rigoletto reflects on the parallels between Sparafucile and himself: one kills with his sword, the other uses his sharp tongue as his weapon.
His mood is lifted as he reaches his home and greets his beloved daughter, Gilda, a convent-raised young girl whom he tries to shield from the ugliness and danger of the outside world. Gilda asks for stories about her long-dead mother and Rigoletto describes her as an angel. He adds that Gilda is all he has left, so he fears for her safety. Gilda reassures him that, while she aches for more freedom, she ventures out only to go to church.
Hearing someone in the courtyard below, Rigoletto warns Gilda’s nurse, Giovanna, not to let anyone enter. As he leaves to investigate the noise, the Duke slips in and bribes Giovanna to leave him alone with Gilda. The Duke, disguised as a poor student, declares his love for Gilda, who has also noticed him at church. Giovanna comes in, warning of footsteps outside. The Duke leaves and an entranced Gilda relives the beauty of their romantic encounter.
Outside, the courtiers have gathered in the street intending to abduct Gilda, whom they believe to be Rigoletto’s mistress. Rigoletto appears, interrupting their plans, so they tell him they are going to abduct Count Ceprano’s wife, who lives nearby. Rigoletto agrees to help and is duped into wearing a blindfold and unknowingly helps them with the abduction of his own daughter. Laughing, the courtiers break into the house and carry Gilda away. Realizing he has been tricked, Rigoletto removes the blindfold and rushes into the house. He discovers Gilda is gone and collapses as he remembers Monterone’s curse.
My fellow blogger/tweeter at the Vancouver Opera tonight is Tris who’s sweetie is soprano Sheila Christie. Sheila is performing in Verdi’s Rigoletto.
Tris says:
Tomorrow night I’ll be joining my fellow bloggers for Verdi’s Rigoletto which is done in a new way with a punk-goth-mediaeval feel to it. In fact Sheila had some pink and purple highlight in her hair at the start of rehearsals (which could have been problematic) and they asked her to punch them up a notch for the performance! How rockin’ is that!?!
Our great opera-blogging evening is happening on opening night, which means fancy fashion, high heels, sparkles along with falsies and falsettos. Vancouver Opera posts their fashion favs in their Fashion at the Opera facebook album.
Want to See Rigoletto? Queen Elizabeth Theatre @ 7:30 pm on the following dates:
Saturday March 7th
Tuesday March 10th
Thursday March 12th
Saturday March 14th
Tuesday March 17th.
Did I mention we get a backstage tour and will be live blogging before the show? Stop by at our table. I’ll let you know the wifi password.
I missed blogging Carmen because I was out of town in San Francisco. Apparently Carmen had actual smoking onstage, but there will be none of that for Rigoletto. I bet Verdi smoked.
Regardless, there will be nudity and suggestive scenes, and, according to publicist Selina, “a cage, and a girl who dies in a sack.”
What the hell is Rigoletto about?
Rigoletto is a misshapen jester whose barbs enrage the courtiers and induce an ominous curse. Gilda is his adored daughter who becomes the innocent victim of their revenge. Seduced by the philandering Duke, Gilda sacrifices her life to save his. Rigoletto is left broken and alone.
Tiny Art Director is one of those projects that gets me giggling like a school girl. Tiny Art Director is an illustrator in collaboration with his 4-year-old daughter, who he claims is actually a sweet kid but by the look on her face has a lot of spunk with which her first teacher is going to have to contend.
I love that this is a blog and a book project.
Help support the Tiny Art Director’s college fund (She’ll be going to RISD in 2023), and get a great present for the beleaguered parent on your list - or anyone else who loves a three year old.
The creative briefs on the site and the critiques of each illustration are close to real, adult conversations I’ve been a part of doing web design. I also appreciate this whole parent-daughter process because my mom used to draw me colouring books as a kid. “Mom, draw me a giraffe. No not like that!” I have to say the follow-up conversation on her side was less congenial. “Do it yourself then.”
The publisher of such authors as Nobel laureate Doris Lessing, Oprah Winfrey favorite David Wroblewski and Newbery prize winner Neil Gaiman has closed and dispersed the Collins division, which specializes in nonfiction books, and laid off a “small percentage” of employees.
“Over the last several months, the unstable economy has had a significant impact on businesses and consumer spending,” HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray wrote in a company memo sent Tuesday. “Our industry is not immune to these market forces, and there is increasing pressure on us, along with our retail and wholesale partners, to adjust.”
No house appears immune to the economic crisis that is intensifying the dysfunction of the publishing industry. The extraordinarily bad news is that the people let go are the top in the game, the ones with the most (and best) experience. How do you rebuild with a bunch of newbies and graduates?
Every person attending the event will receive access to the conference event, along with a complimentary WordPress souvenir, and admission to the social event in the evening on the 24th. The swag is apparently very cool.
Early bird pricing of $35 is only valid until Friday, January 9. After that time the price raises to $40.
If you plan to stay overnight, the Fairmont has reserved some rooms at a sweet price, but book soon. Fairmont will be releasing some of the reserved rooms into the general populace shortly. If you want to book, please use this link.
“Chandler Burr is the New York Times’ first-ever fragrance critic. His knowledge of the history, culture, emotion, economics, science and global geography of scent may be unrivaled. Come along with Chandler as he leads the Camden Opera House on an interactive, hyper-articulate and hilarious olfactory journey.”
Robert Bringhurst takes us on another of his walking tours, this time through the bramble of English and French-Canadian books and book design, from the mid-18th Century to the present day. Along the way, he discovers a true “image trove” of identity, culture and history.
And he does what no other work on books and publications does: He creates a truly national survey of Canadian books by bringing Canada’s long history of Aboriginal story-telling into a context of “book”. It is a context that goes into the depths of our prehistory, far beyond the printed page.
I am a big fan of Bringhurst and a fan of book design. Penguin by Design by Philip Baines was a favourite read a couple of years ago.
Plain Words, Uncommon Sense A blog on books, writing, tap dancing, technology, and the other amusements of Monique Sherrett (or Monique Trottier in unmarried form).
Monique Sherrett lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada and is a litblogger, among other things. Find out more ...
"So misguided." A comment often uttered in my eclectic salon.
Contact
Send me book galleys, ARCs or review copies. Contact me at monique at somisguided dot com Contact me at Boxcar Marketing
