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Everything about this production was incredible - the costumes, the sets (amazing!), the music, and of course the wonderful cast. Mephistopheles was ill the night of the performance but still sang and sounded incredible - you can't beat the commitment and talent of these singers, they are all superb!
The look of the play was exceedingly good but the delivery of the composition needed more.
This was my first Opera and it was wonderful. I will be back!
I have enjoyed The Portland Opera for years. This production of Rigoletto totally hit the spot. My wife and I enjoyed it from curtain to curtain! I grew up with Opera. I can't wait to wait to see Aida and Madame Butterfly. Please try to stage these operas!
The musicianship and sets of this opera were incredible, and the voices utterly unforgettable.
Fabulous production. The voices were amazing. The orchestra was very professional. I find myself humming some of the more famous songs from the opera.
Easily the best opera that I have seen in Portland. Lavish Costumes, excellent stage and set design, wonderful cast and brilliant score brought the tragic story to life for one enchanted evening. Keep up the great work Portland Opera!
Absolutely GREAT. The performance was what an opera should be. The scene designs were good and of course the singers are thrilling. What an exceptional voice of the lead lady singer. Gave me chills and of course Rigoleto;s voice as a tenor was beyond compare. I'm glad that this Opera was performed in the "old"style and not re-made into a modern configuration Thank you for a great evening.
First time we attended an opera at Keller Hall and impressed by the physical presence of the theater. The cast for the opera Regoletto exceeded our expectations and would rate them all exceptional. We were very appreciative of the pre lecture and Hanna who played the Maddalena who gave the lecture was excellent in her wealth of knowledge of the opera nd composer.
An excellent production of Rigoletto with pretty much all the boxes checked: vigorous exciting conducting, a mellifluous Gilda with the ability to float a lovely high pianissimo, a tenor with the heft to sell La Donna Mobile, and most importantly a Rigoletto who not only sells the role vocally but dramatically as well. So what if the tenor does NOT look the part (the pageboy hair-do doesn't help), and the chorus is occasionally a little underwhelming; the over-all effect is quite stunning with some truly thrilling Verdian singing.
I do not want my review to seem too negative but I think there are some realities of local opera companies to be aware of. To be fair I am neither a musician or vocalist but I do love opera. Portland Opera vocalists are wonderful, but they are not those on the world stage. The volume of things is critical in Opera. By that I mean that every care should be taken in insure harmony between the orchestra and the vocalists. The Orchestra should not play so loudly that the voice is poorly heard, which is what I think happened for the big night concert. In fact, I think they overshadowed the Chorus as well. It is an Operatic venue, after all.
the talent level was absolutely top shelf, didn't understand a word, but the energy and emotion was really fascinating . . .go see it . . it's an annual show to open the season
The voices in this opera were outstanding; however, the production ended up being campy and circus-like. Really hard to watch the end of the 2nd half.
This was the first opera experience for my wife and I and it was incredible. The Newmark Theatre is very nice and the actors were incredible!
The performance and the players were wonderful. The production was whack. Seriously, what were you thinking with the that set/video/costume tripe? I get that the production budget didn't cover multiple costume changes or sets in period but bad early nineties computer animation isn't the fix for that. Nice tail, BTW, but WTF? Lorenzo Da Ponte's story of deception and infidelity is a pretty tough sell in it's original form; it's not like there are any characters in this play that deserve accolades for their good behavior. Mashed together cheap tricks and hackneyed art flair made me feel sorry for the talent; and they were clearly very talented.
My 2nd opera and it was great. I have a tape of Mozart's music and it was my first time hearing the overture live, and wished it was a larger orchestra, but the the show was very entertaining. Its amazing to watch something that was composed over 200 yrs. ago. The modern twists were fun. It makes me want to see the original version too now.
This was an opera for the modern era. Great music (of course) and singers but brilliant staging too. Great use of video combined with on-stage theatrics. All served to take the edge off a rather mysoginistic basic premise to the piece and produce a flowing story of human frailty. Oh, and the orchestra was magnificent in driving all of this.
"We need to appeal to the millenials," they said in their first creative meeting for Cosi Fan Tutte. "Get out the whiteboard! What do these millenials like?" "This VR is big! My nephew got one for his birthday and loves it." "Vaping!" "Snapchat!" "Oooh, what if we like, mixed Portlandia into it?" "Great idea! Like voodoo donuts and manbuns. Love it." Such a shame that a brilliant opera and excellent performances were squandered on this piecemeal atrocity. The staging was designed with the sole purpose of distracting and detracting, particularly after the break. Updated operas can certainly work well, but this was a huge swing and a miss. The CGI projections were great when they were subtle, but when they jammed their way into the foreground, they looked tacky and low budget, like something you would expect to see from a computer graphics demo in the mid-90's. Other meta elements worked well. Revealing the backstage to change outfits I found compelling, and the video camera on the audience could have worked better had they shown more brevity with it.
Highly entertaining and well sung by a fine cast. A bit too many monkeyshines (sometimes literally) for what is a fundamentally ambiguous and bittersweet story. Kudos to the conductor for keeping everything on track.
Set were good, orchestra was good (as usual), singing was good. I didn't care for the 'modern' costume bit in act two. I especially did not like the homosexual innuendo from the tents!!!!!
