1 There are times when one knows that everything is going to be all right. The place is right, so is the company, and so was the production of Rigoletto at the ROH earlier in the week. It was just good to be in our customary positions, standing at the back of the stalls looking directly forward to the stage.
2 From the Count's entry, we were gripped. That entry leads quickly to the first notable aria of the opera, Questa o quello, a pulsing commitment to perpetual motion from one woman to another. 'Obligation and vows of devotion,/I detest them like cruel diseases./Let the faithful keep faith it he pleases'. The count sets the tone of the court. The courtiers take up the refrain, the house is filled with the driving lines and rhythms. We're on our way.
3 The entry of the eponymous hunchback strengthened the grip. Familiar though we were with the hunchback, deformed in body, twisted in mind, as the licenced, bitter jester, we watched and we listened. And we were ready for the metamorphosis as the approached his house for there, as he sang, he could be another man. He could be a father, a most loving one.
4 Without a doubt, a father who is at odds with a daughter should buy two tickets for this performance (or any one close to it in quality). Both should then listen to the love between the fictional father and daughter. In the house, there was no need to attend to the words as the music expressed the mutual love between a hunchback and a confined, vulnerable young daughter in a way no words could match.
5 And we are ready to weep (silenty) as Rigoletto turns to his daughter's duenna Ah veglia, o donna questo fiore and asks, directs her to guard his daughter, his flower. 'Keep her safe from all danger/Keep her innocent and fair'. The house was silent. From someone so deformed as Rigoletto came a achingly beautiful aria. Meanwhile, the duenna has betrayed and will betray her trust.
6 We watched and listened, not missing a jot. We were watching a Hobbesian world but listening to a blissful one. Abduction, rape in the guise of seduction, betrayal, execution, curses, assassination by arrangement. The lovely young daughter was untouched of course, but so too, in private, was her mis-shapen father. The priapic count, the assassin and his predatory sister were also untouched: for them their immorality was just a way of living. It was the father who was left to grieve, as we left the house feeling for him and waiting to meet him again.
7 Early on in the opera he was the sardonic, stinging jester-beetle. At home, he is different. He is loved and loving. And so he is vulnerable. His daughter, his flower is stolen, is abused. We feel for the man. We continue to do so in his continuing distress. We think of him not as the sardonic jester but as a father.
8 Everything has turned out right, just as we knew, right at the start, it would. As the months pass, even the years, we shall recall fewer and fewer of the notes but we shall recall the music of the evening, one in which - did I tell you - that everything, but everything, was just right.
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