As in the past, the cast sings live on camera in real-life houses and palaces, taking cues from Zubin Mehta, who conducts an orchestra live in a nearby theater, communicating via video monitors. This gives the film the live-performance immediacy needed to counteract the ever-present possibility that too much reality will break the illusion of a medium in which people sing rather than talk.
Past site-specific telecasts had entire scenes when that illusion was broken. Here, problems are only peripheral. Director Marco Bellocchio sometimes shows off the Mantua palace at the expense of the story. Crowd scenes are clumsy. Daytime indoor scenes have clinical lighting, in contrast to atmospheric nighttime scenes.
But the singers look and sound right - mostly. Having sung the tenor role of the duke for years, Domingo assumes the hunchback mantle of Rigoletto almost by default: No Verdi baritone seems to own the role at the moment. And though his voice retains a tenor timbre, he can do the work of a baritone. Dramatically, he's not right in the beginning when acting as the duke's acid-tongued jester; we should see Rigoletto's cruelty and why the court hates him so much. But Domingo, for all his acting chops, has never had inhumanity in his repertoire.
Once into the opera, he displays an epic anguish that never feels too overwrought for the tight quarters imposed by his close-ups, which are numerous and appropriate. Rigoletto is only superficially about the Mantua court; it takes its greatness from depicting deep wells of emotional need in a deformed, bitter man who is terrified of losing his daughter, Gilda, the only semblance of goodness in his life.
The best moments, though, are when Domingo faces off with one of the few working opera stars his age - the nearly-70 Ruggero Raimondi, who plays the seedy assassin Sparafucile with smoldering gravity. Their scenes, alone, are reasons to see this.
As the dissolute Duke of Mantua, the much-discussed young tenor Vittorio Grigola hasn't yet learned the less-is-more lesson of performing before cameras, but is exciting enough that you can momentarily forget most past tenors who have sung the hit aria "La donna è mobile." He also has the kind of star quality that creates illusions: Though a dashing screen presence, he looks strangely plain in interviews.
Julia Novikova has all you could want in the role of Gilda - passion, voice, looks, and a keen understanding of how innocence goes awry.
Contact music critic David Patrick Stearns at dstearns@phillynews.com.
