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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Mark Segal
631-283-2118, ext 22
RIGOLETTO AGAIN?
PARRISH PRESENTS NEW VERSION FILMED IN THE STREETS AND PALACES OF MANTUA, WITH PLACIDO DOMINGO IN THE TITLE ROLE
SOUTHAMPTON, NY 2/11/2011 — Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Rigoletto is one of the best known and most performed works in the opera canon. As part of Emerging Pictures’ Opera in Cinema series, the Parrish Art Museum is presenting a unique interpretation of Verdi’s masterpiece on Sunday, February 20, at 2 pm. This version, also known as Rigoletto in Mantua, was filmed not in an opera house but in the streets, alleyways, palaces, and courtyards of Mantua over a two-day period in 2010 by noted Italian film director Marco Bellocchio.
The real Palazzo Ducale of Mantua, replete with Andrea Mantegna’s early Renaissance ceiling frescoes, is only one star of this production. Placido Domingo, who has performed the tenor role of the Duke of Mantua many times, here undertakes the baritone role of Rigoletto. According to Domingo, “When [producer] Andrea Andermann invited me to interpret the part of Rigoletto, I replied that there were so many good baritones in the world who could sing it. But Andrea said that he wasn’t looking for a baritone, but rather for the Rigoletto whom I, Placido Domingo, could bring to life.” The role of the Duke is played by tenor Vittorio Grigolo, who is one of the hottest young opera stars performing today.
According to Anne Ozorio of Opera Today, “Realism never comes more authentic than this Rigoletto filmed live on location in Mantua, Italy…Just as Verdi indicated, each Act unfolds at the correct time of day, in the place indicated in the libretto. No ordinary theatre has the capacity to create a production as loyal to the composer’s instructions as this.” Tickets to Rigoletto are $14 for Parrish members, $17 for nonmembers. The running time is 153 minutes.
The Museum's programs are made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, celebrating 50 years of building strong, creative communities in New York State's 62 counties, and the property taxpayers from the Southampton School District and the Tuckahoe Common School District.
About the Parrish Art Museum
The Parrish Art Museum is an American art museum located in Southampton, New York. Founded in 1897, the museum celebrates the artistic legacy of Long Island’s East End, one of America’s most vital creative centers. Since the mid 1950s the Museum has grown from a small village art gallery into an important art museum with a collection of more than 2,600 works of art from the nineteenth century to the present. It includes such contemporary painters and sculptors as John Chamberlain, Chuck Close, Eric Fischl, April Gornik, Elizabeth Peyton, as well as such masters as Dan Flavin, Roy Lichtenstein, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, and Willem de Kooning. The Parrish houses among of the world’s most important collections of works by the preeminent American Impressionist William Merritt Chase and by the groundbreaking post-war American realist painter Fairfield Porter. A vital cultural resource serving a diverse audience, the Parrish organizes and presents changing exhibitions and offers a dynamic schedule of creative and engaging public programs including lectures, films, performances, concerts, and studio classes for all ages. On July 19, 2010, the Parrish broke ground on a new building designed by internationally acclaimed architects Herzog & de Meuron. The 34,500-square-foot facility will triple the Museum’s current exhibition space and allow for the simultaneous presentation of loan exhibitions and installations drawn from the permanent collection.
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