Guest Review: Vesselina Kasarova in Verdi's Rigoletto at Opera Bastille

The following review of the current run of Verdi's Rigoletto (with particular attention on our mutual favorite singer, Vesselina Kasarova) in Paris is guest-posted here courtesy of John Carnegie of Scotland. Thanks very much, John!

VESSELINA KASAROVA IN “RIGOLETTO” AT THE OPÉRA BASTILLE IN PARIS ON 14TH APRIL 2016

Through shuffling round work assignments, I managed to attend the second performance of the Opéra National de Paris’s new production of Verdi’s Rigoletto at their unlovely Opéra Bastille venue – a vast and gloomy barn of a building that makes the New York MET seem almost intimate by comparison. 

Vesselina Kasarova was billed to play the comparatively minor role of Maddalena, the assassin’s sister/accomplice who causes the downfall of the title character and his daughter by succumbing to the charms of the opera’s philandering baddie, the Duke.  Given that Maddalena does not show up on stage until the very last scene of a long evening and that VK had cancelled her announced appearances on the two previous occasions that I had booked to see her, there was always a doubt in my mind as to whether she would turn up this time for a task that might seem somewhat beneath her.  On the other hand, the fact that Maddalena is a prominent participant in the Quartet (for my money, the single most sublime passage of music in the whole history of opera) made for a compelling reason to hope against hope that VK might actually appear.  Well, she did and to great effect.

Before one got through to her eventual entrance, however, one had to surmount the hurdles of the visuals on offer.  Claus Guth was on directing duties and his typically high concept piece of “regie-theater” proved to be a very mixed blessing.  The curtain rose at the start to reveal the figure of “Rigoletto’s Double”, a mimed role who represented Rigoletto looking back retrospectively on the events of the opera by mourning over the contents of a brown cardboard box he carried: his ex-jester’s costume and the blood-stained robe of his deceased daughter.  This distracting figure was onstage throughout the evening and his non-stop gurning succeeded in constantly pulling the focus from Quinn Kelsey’s portrayal of the singing version of the title character.


As the set unfurled around the “Double”, it quickly became evident that it represented a gigantic sideways version of the cardboard box he carried.  Brown cardboard is a very drab surface indeed and (combined with mostly monochrome costumes) made for a visually dull experience.  However, that proved to VK’s great benefit.  When she made her entrance in sparkling black thigh-high boots, a tight-fitting jump suit surmounted by a top hat a la Marlene Dietrich and carrying off a choreographed Las Vegas-inspired routine backed by a bevy of half-naked showgirls, this was the first visual excitement of the evening and the audience rose to the spectacle and VK’s panache in accomplishing it.  This compensated for the fact that she was having to deal with the inconsiderate accompaniment of Nicola Luisotti – one of the breed of conductors whose head is mostly in the score and rarely paying attention to the performers on the stage.  He spent much of the evening drowning out the singers with his vast orchestra.  Fortunately, VK managed to gradually overcome this unwarranted competition – first in a very telling contribution to the Quartet and then in her successful attempt to put some backbone into Rafał Siwek’s dour assassin.  Her portrayal could definitely be counted as a success and was richly rewarded with the audience’s applause at the curtain call.

As for the three principal roles, Quinn Kelsey made for a touching Rigoletto and often managed to command the stage (despite the distractions of his “Double”).  Michael Fabiano’s Duke was a less compelling assumption and was the singer who suffered most from being swamped by the orchestra.  Still, he perked up greatly in the last act – spurred on perhaps by the attentions of VK and the dancing showgirls.  The star of the evening though was Olga Peretyatko’s Gilda: pin-sharp in her coloratura and hugely affecting throughout.  Her final appearance was particularly moving.  In one of Herr Guth’s happier inventions, Gilda does not spend her last minutes onstage in a sack but as a disembodied spirit diagonally traversing the stage as she disappears from her father into eternity.  It was not just Ms Peretyatko’s nationality, talent and looks but also her manner that brought to mind a young Anna Netrebko.  The packed audience took her to their collective hearts and gave her a huge round of applause at the curtain call.  It was notable that VK (who has always been demonstrably appreciative of her fellow performers onstage) was particularly enthusiastic in her applause for Ms Peretyatko.

The current run of performances of Rigoletto in Paris is playing through to the end of May and VK (unlike her fellow principals) is scheduled to appear in all of them.  If you go on the 14th and 30th of May, you will not get the benefit of Ms Peretyatko’s Gilda but you will at least be spared Mr Luisotti’s conducting.  So, is it worth braving the travails of getting through the oppressive security arrangements of contemporary Paris (post Charlie Hebdo, the most militarised city in the western world) and enduring some of the vagaries of Herr Guth’s production?  On the whole (and particularly for VK and Olga Peretyatko), I would say yes.

*******

Why I Love Vesselina Kasarova

I am often asked why I enjoy listening to Vesselina Kasarova so much. A fair question considering how much she dominates my classical and opera music essays and reviews... and youtube channel. Don't think that I don't think about the danger of being so emotionally invested on an artist whose work I review both for work and for pleasure, though. I do.... A lot. It is a main reason why I don't usually go and meet performers backstage even when invited.

That said, here is what I consider one of the biggest compliments ever paid to me (albeit from behind my back and with a distinctly uncomplimentary intent):

The comment was caused when the youtuber left a slew of stuff he misguidedly called 'constructive criticism' at the youtube clip I post of Kasarova singing Carmen's Habanera during a song recital in the Netherlands in 1994. I don't know about others' sensibility, but I can hardly see the constructiveness in:

"Sounds like a whale vomitting: imprecise rhythm, blemishes in the coloratura, gratuitous glottal, etc. Very unusual for her but hardly surprising. What did Kasarova expect to happen with her forced technique? This is my favourite piece of music in existence, so this video is truly repulsive to me. Susan Graham and Anne Sofie von Otter are the real Ariodante's."

Since I let stand uncontested plenty of 'Don't like this singing. Prefer another's' comments there and elsewhere, I don't feel the slightest bit bad about my ability to let others fairly criticize Kasarova and other favorite singers... As long as the criticism is fair and not just a cover for personal attack on the performers or other youtubers.

At any rate, the part I regard as highly complimentary for my sensibility is the last part of the comment the troll posted on another youtube opera fans with the same big-dick-complex comes in the last bit of it:

"Good grief, even when Kasarova makes mistakes that Smorg even admits, she turns it around saying that it improves the music."

That... is what I strive to do when reviewing music. I don't omit the mistakes that my favorite singers make or the 'flaws' in their instrument. But I do my best to put into context what these irregularities bring to or take away from the performance. And even Kasarova is not exempt from that. That is what I think a good music critic/reviewer/writer ought to do. 

I may not succeed all the time, and there are performances that are so bad that they give no new or unusual insight to provide the show with a context worth dwelling on. But hopefully most of the time I am able to separate 'deciphering what the musicians are trying to do or communicate' from 'imposing wantonly on their performance my own personal standard/preference'. And so, when I read that even people who regard themselves my enemies notice with glee that I do state my all time favorite artist's flaws and vocal irregularities in my reviews of her performance and that I try to relate what those irregularities communicate in her story-telling. It is a compliment of the highest order for what I have been trying to do all along!

But back to the big question of why Vesselina Kasarova is such a big part of my life. Short answer: survival. She was unknowingly there when I needed someone the most (as she has been, equally as unknowingly, there for many others who still write to tell me every so often how their experience with her lift their spirits). And she has qualities that easily outlast the episode.

La Kasarova has a very complex and multi-layered singing voice that I find endlessly fascinating in its melancholic depth and kaleidoscopic coloration.... And she has a knack for acting; both vocally and theatrically, with this rare ability to endow her opera characters with all sorts of insecurities and emotional angst that she probably wouldn't dare to express in real life. 

I discovered her sometime in 2005 when I was having a rather rough time. In a ruinous health condition and distanced yet again by the one woman I can't stop loving, I spent much of my time in a dark depression away from everyone. Then I chanced on Kasarova's voice on a cable TV program singing the music I normally detested: opera. And, suddenly, for the first time in my excessively even-keeled left-brain-oriented life, I understood the value of good drama. It connects you with others and lessens the sense of vulnerability in real life. 

(Youtube video of Penelope's entrance scene to Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria. Posted by Arashi)

Thereafter, whenever I feel quite sucky and ill-understood I'd put her on the stereo and let her rant and rave in my place. It is sort of therapeutic since I don't really talk to anyone in real life and tend to keep my stress to myself. I'd listen to the lass sing something achy from I Capuleti e i Montecchi or Ariodante or La clemenza di Tito and allow myself to imagine that there is at least one person out there who had been there and knows exactly what it feels like. 

I don't know Kasarova personally and won't presume to know what sort of distresses she must have had in her life in order to be able to inject into her voice such devastating pathos... But I know that she grew up an only child in behind-the-iron-curtain Bulgaria where her granddad was a political prisoner and her dad drove a cab for a living because he was denied university education by the communists. She had to do well in school and conservatory to survive the fierce competition (the Soviet sucked at most things except for the arts and sports, apparently) and secure a chance to escape to the West, so I'm pretty convinced that she has a good capacity for empathy. Even if she hadn't experienced the exact things her operatic characters go through in the course of the preposterous stories (and that is being quite charitable... a lot of opera have such holey plots they make Emmenthaler looks like solid granite block by comparison), there certainly is enough tragedies and downers in her memory bank to allow her to approximate them very convincingly. And that is all that matters to me, really...

My favorite down song is actually rather morbidly humorous in the context of the opera story... Ariodante thinks his fiancee had cheated on him, so he goes and tries to drown himself in the sea, moaning along this 'I'm so hard done by' tune as he wades into the crashing cold waves... But then instead of going under and be done with it along with the final notes, the ocean coughs the dude back ashore very much alive, mad, and now also very wet... to add to the indignity of it all. Talk about being incompetent as an operatic superhero - the idiot can't even kill himself properly! But then the opera was named after him, so we can't very well have Ariodante drown half way into the story. As the plot goes, he dries up and gets back into town, finds out that the girl hadn't betrayed him after all and ends the opera on a happy note (lest the opera audience leave the auditorium feeling too down and depressed to patronize the fine restaurants and drinking bars on their way home... That would just be sucky for the local economy).

What listening to this does for me, though, is giving me the opportunity to indulge in some self-pitying by proxy. I can't bring myself to express what Ariodante spends nearly 15 minutes intoning in the piece, so I sort of let myself think that Kasarova/Ariodante is doing that on my behave. And, miracle of miracles, I feel so much better at the end of it while am still able to placate my overly proud conscience with the fact that I hadn't actually voiced such a humiliating emotional defeat myself. Another person is doing it and I just sort of latch on for the ride. It is only additionally cool that the person who voices the thing for me is also benefiting from the same sort of thing... letting her deepest angst out of her system under the cover of the opera character she is portraying. It is a sort of communal Schadenfreude in a Schizophrenic sort of way.

And to top it off, by all accounts Kasarova is one of the most well grounded and pleasant normal person off the stage. She is very well liked and well spoken. She is candid at interviews but goes out of her way to stick with the issues rather than personally attack others (she only names people to praise them)... and she dares to talk about the unpleasant parts of the opera business that less courageous souls wouldn't dare to risk touching them. 

I suspect many younger singers are grateful for the light she shines on the troubles they must face but can't publicly talk about without risking their nascent career in doing so. And also for blazing the trail in her will to use unconventional techniques at the service of story-telling in her performances even when that draws repeated critical face slaps in the mainstream media. She gives us audience more stylistic performance options to choose from in the days when most singers sound so alike that they can hardly be identified based on their voice alone, and she also takes the heat off younger singers who would love to do the same thing against the established trend toward institutional sterilization of the operatic singing voice.

And for that... I absolutely love the gal and those who are and who give her the support she needs in order to be able to deliver and live all that in relative happiness. Life is short and there are many who spend theirs without leaving much impact on others. Kasarova may not have set out to do it, but she is one whose impacts on many lives will outlast her career and even her lifetime. It is a sort of immortality that is well earned and worthy of cherishing, in my moderately humble opinion.

And.... if this extended rambling doesn't cure you of being nice enough to ask me anything about opera and/or Vesselina Kasarova ever again, then nothing will!