Even as the transposition underscored the story’s malevolence, my mind struggled to overlook the incongruities. In came the Duke, eventually followed by characters with the familiar names of Countess Ceprano, Rigoletto, Monterone, Gilda. Not that there were any children in the audience on an 80-degree sunny spring afternoon. Big, Boobie, Hymie, Motormouth Maggie, Iceman, Tokyo Joe, Vera, and Gaspipe John, were engaged in enough simulated sex to require parental guidance notification. The choristers, sporting perfect period-costumes by Meghan Muser and given unspoken names like Mr. (Perhaps it was a subterranean bar in the Duke’s sprawling palace, complete with industrial steel beams, tables, and chain link fencing, that seemed to cage people in.) The curtain opened, not on a room in the Duke’s palace in 16th-century Mantua, but instead on scenic designer Jean-François Revon and director Attila Béres’ take on a dark, 20th-century Chicago gangster-era nightclub. Without knowing how anyone could possibly make a credible assessment of regional opera company quality in all 50 states, I focused my attention on a production that was undoubtedly meant to indicate things to come. “We have a vision of being the best regional opera company in the U.S.,” he said with utter sincerity. Scher then made a most genteel and agreeable pitch for the company’s goal of raising $1.5 million by the end of 2010. ![]() ![]() Thank God, the delay was due, not to a last-minute indisposition, but to the late, “I’m sure she’ll be here any minute,” arrival of a violinist. Twenty minutes after the scheduled beginning of San Francisco Lyric Opera’s matinee performance of Verdi’s Rigoletto, General Manager Bob Scher stepped before the Cowell Theater curtain to speak.
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