Music: Verdi with a Jukebox

The English National Opera makes its first U.S. tour

Can this be Rigoletto? The curtain rises on a mid-20th century New York City hotel ballroom instead of a 16th century Mantuan ducal palazzo; the Duke and his courtiers are not nobles but crime lords, and Rigoletto is a bartender, not a jester. The second scene takes place in a Little Italy tenement where Rigoletto has secreted his daughter, Gilda, and where she is wooed by the Duke, who sports a high school warmup jacket. The finale is set in a seedy, Hopperesque waterfront dive....

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