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Giuseppe Verdi’s tragedy “Rigoletto” was first performed in 1851 and is still a cornerstone of the Italian opera repertoire. Finger Lakes Opera’s new production of this favorite opera, opening Aug. 7, brings together a veteran director with two lead singers who have strong Rochester connections.
The blunt drama of this opera shocked some of its first audiences, and it still packs a punch. Rigoletto, a jester in the corrupt court of Mantua, is an embittered man whose only joy is his fiercely protected daughter Gilda. Rigoletto’s womanizing employer, the Duke of Mantua, sets his sights on Gilda, seducing and kidnapping her. The wrathful Rigoletto plans to murder the Duke, but in vain: Gilda dies in her father’s arms.
The secret weapon that made this gloomy story palatable was Verdi’s music. In addition to its three dynamite leading roles, “Rigoletto” has some of the most memorable arias and ensembles in opera, including the Duke’s “Questa o quella” and “La donna é mobile,” Gilda’s “Caro nome,” and a quartet in the fourth act when the tragedy reaches its climax (during a violent thunderstorm, no less).
The stage director of “Rigoletto,” Stephanie Havey, has directed a number of FLO productions, most recently “Aida,” and recently was named FLO’s artistic director.
Havey is a trained singer, dancer, and actress, but admits, “I most loved working with composers and conductors, and I always wanted to be a director.”
By now Havey has directed “a little bit of everything—Verdi, Mozart, Puccini, modern works. But ‘Rigoletto’ was my introduction to Verdi, and now it’s the opera I’ve done most in my career,” she says. The upcoming FLO production will be Havey’s 11th.
“I’ve studied ‘Rigoletto’ a thousand times,” says Havey, “but each time I discover a nuance in Verdi’s vocal writing or orchestration that adds depth and dimension to the characters.” (The opera’s music director and conductor is Michael Sakir.)
Havey sees her role as artistic director as “creating art that connects to the community. My career as a director grew out of my love of grand opera, and I want FLO to invite people in, to help build community through performing beloved repertoire.”
She sees another FLO goal as “connecting with the other arts organizations in town.” This has been done successfully with Garth Fagan Dance, which performed in the 2023 production of “Aida” and in this summer’s “The Anonymous Lover,” and offers dance master classes to singers. To Havey, these collaborations all go together: “Singers, dancers, actors, directors, designers—in theater we’re all storytellers,” she says.
“Opera is perceived by many people as elitist or not welcoming, and we want to prove that it isn’t true. Finger Lakes Opera is of, by, and for the community.”
Finger Lakes Opera’s major productions take place during the summer, but the company, now in its 20th year, is busy all year round with an Apprentice Artists program, school presentations, informal “Opera and Ales” shows at local breweries, an annual Juneteenth concert, and much more. (See the FLO website for details.)
“The community aspect of Finger Lakes Opera is a huge part of it for me,” says Joshua Conyers, the baritone who will play Rigoletto.
Conyers recently joined the Eastman School of Music’s voice faculty. After playing smaller roles in “Rigoletto,” Conyers first had his chance at the title role with the Wilmington (NC) Opera; Finger Lakes Opera will be his second.
“It is so physically demanding,” says Conyers. “It’s also a very emotionally layered role, almost a 180-degree flip. Rigoletto has two lives: his job at the court, which he hates, and his intense, protective love for his daughter Gilda. Probably too protective.
“It’s so easy to dive into the drama and overdo the voice,” adds Conyers. “The role of Rigoletto is a real balancing act. But every baritone wants to sing it.”
If every baritone wants to play Rigoletto, the role of his doomed daughter is equally coveted by sopranos. Gilda, says Jazmine Saunders, was one of her three dream roles, after singing several of Gilda’s most important scenes as a student. (The third character in Verdi’s tragic triangle, the womanizing Duke, is played by tenor Christopher Bozeka.)
“Gilda is the largest role I’ve sung, and in the great arc of her character, the most challenging,” says Saunders. “In studying it, I concluded that Verdi actually wrote the role of Gilda for two or three sopranos.
“In the first act she is a young, sheltered girl, and her music calls for buoyant vocalism. In the succeeding acts, after she is betrayed by the Duke, she is heartbroken, shamed, and scared. The music lies much lower and the lines are jagged—almost yelling in the storm scene.
“But at the end,” notes Saunders, “when she is dying and looking to heaven, that delicate vocal quality of the first act returns to her music. She goes from life to death to life again.”
A Rochester native, an Eastman graduate, and a member of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindeman Young Artists Program, Saunders has already appeared in “The Marriage of Figaro,” and will be in next season’s Met productions of “La Sonnambula” and “Porgy and Bess.” (She is also an FLO Young Artist alum, performing in the ensemble for “The Barber of Seville” in 2022.)
But for now, she says, learning Gilda is her priority. “To return to my hometown of Rochester in my first performance of a role I have always wanted to sing—I really see it as a provision of God.”
Finger Lakes Opera presents Verdi’s “Rigoletto” Thursday, Aug. 7 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Aug. 10 at 2 p.m. at Robert F. Panara Theatre at RIT/NTID, Rochester Institute of Technology, 52 Lomb Memorial Drive 14623. Information and tickets are available here.
David Raymond is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer.
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