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WILKES-BARRE — The opera “Rigoletto” is an intensely sad story about an innocent young woman, seduced and slain apparently because bad karma is coming back to hit her father with a vengeance.

But, Giorgio Lalov said, people will enjoy watching and listening anyway.

“It’s like ‘Madama Butterfly.’ It doesn’t matter that she dies in the end. It’s very beautiful music and the audience, I’m sure, will like it,” said Lalov, artistic director of Teatro Lirico D’Europa, which will present the Verdi masterpiece on Saturday evening at the F.M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts.

The traveling troupe is dedicated to bringing opera to communities that might not otherwise have a chance to experience it.

“In Wilkes-Barre there is no opera company in town,” Lalov said. “We try to come and present an opera there; otherwise, people will have to travel to Pittsburgh or Philadelphia. We want to make it affordable.”

Another goal for Lalov, he said, is to “be honest with the composer. What the composer had in mind, that is what people get.”

That means he wouldn’t stage “Rigoletto” in a different time period or costume the cast in anything but the styles worn by a Renaissance duke and his jester and other people who visit his court or skulk about looking to commit murder.

It’s also important for him to cast singers who are believable as the characters they portray. “Gilda can’t be 500 pounds and 50 years old,” he said. “With all due respect, she has to be believable, as a 20-year-old beautiful soprano.”

Gilda, the tragic heroine, is the daughter of Rigoletto, the court jester.

And Rigoletto, though he loves his child, is not the kindest and most compassionate of men. When a visitor comes to the court, complaining that the villainous duke has had his way with the visitor’s daughter, Rigoletto mocks the situation.

The visitor curses the duke and Rigoletto and, after many plot twists, Rigoletto will come to understand first-hand the misery of a grieving father.

“There’s a moral to the story,” Lalov said. “Rigoletto makes fun of an old man; then the same thing happens to his own daughter. People have to be humble, because all the bad things you do come back to you.”

The performance at the F.M. Kirby Center will be sung in Italian with English supratitles projected above the stage. The aria with which audience members might be most familiar is “La donna e mobile,” in which the duke, of all people, sings about women being fickle.

There are many other beautiful pieces as well, Lalov promised. “You will enjoy it.”

The jester devises a plot against his employer, the duke, and it doesn’t work out quite the way he would like it to.
https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/web1_rigo2.jpg.optimal.jpgThe jester devises a plot against his employer, the duke, and it doesn’t work out quite the way he would like it to.

The Verdi opera ‘Rigoletto’ will bring its gritty story and soaring music to the F.M. Kirby Center on Saturday.
https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/web1_AccusedRIGOLETTO.jpg.optimal.jpgThe Verdi opera ‘Rigoletto’ will bring its gritty story and soaring music to the F.M. Kirby Center on Saturday.

Artistic director of Teatro Lirico D’Europa Giorgio Lalov wouldn’t stage ‘Rigoletto’ in a different time period or costume the cast in anything but the styles worn by a Renaissance duke and his jester and other people who visit his court or skulk about looking to commit murder.
https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/web1_RIGOLETTO-pleads.jpg.optimal.jpgArtistic director of Teatro Lirico D’Europa Giorgio Lalov wouldn’t stage ‘Rigoletto’ in a different time period or costume the cast in anything but the styles worn by a Renaissance duke and his jester and other people who visit his court or skulk about looking to commit murder.

Rigoletto, the jester, will eventually be visited by bad karma in the opera that bears his name.
https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/web1_rigo.jpg.optimal.jpgRigoletto, the jester, will eventually be visited by bad karma in the opera that bears his name.
Opera tells of young woman slain because of father’s indiscretions

By Mary Therese Biebel

[email protected]

IF YOU GO

What: Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto’

Who: Teatro Lirico D’Europa,

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: F.M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts, 71 Public Square, Wilkes-Barre

Tickets: $10

Reach Mary Therese Biebel at 570-991-6109 or on Twitter @BiebelMT.