Russian bass Goderdzi Janelidze sang
Sparafucile with requisite, inky tone but also, a slightly swallowed projection of vowels and consonants.
Tenor Joseph Kaiser was a notable Pylades in Iphigenia, and baritone Phillip Ens (
Sparafucile) and Robert Pomakov (Count Monterone) were some of the memorable lower voices in Rigoletto.
Brooding on it before he is approached by the assassin
Sparafucile in act 1, it continues to haunt him throughout the work (Figs.
There's an assassin,
Sparafucile, whose shot proves far more accurate than his countryman's footballers and a gang of menacing clownmasked kidnappers.
David Soar just gets better and better and here, in his last season under contract with WNO, he sings the contract assassin
Sparafucile. This singer's career will now blossom further here and across the opera houses.
And David Soar with that deep rich voice and extraordinary presence sends shivers down the spine as the hired assassin
Sparafucile.
His Act I aria, "Pari siamo!" (We are alike) convincingly compares himself to the assassin
Sparafucile, and yet as he limps across stage and arrives home - Ma in altr'unomo qui mi cangio!
The cast also includes bass-baritone Bryan Glenn Davis, who plays two roles: Count Monterone, who curses both Rigoletto and the duke, and
Sparafucile, the assassin.
The university educated Valentin misses the allusion to
Sparafucile, causing Molina to observe, "Obviously you don't know anything about opera.
He writes for the community of Sondheim scholars in the way that a Verdi symposium would be published for Verdi scholars, for whom Verdi's style holds no secrets and
Sparafucile needs no identification.
The only apparent misfortune of the productions final performance was the illness of Jon-Paul Decosse who, as
Sparafucile, was audible only sporadically.