The Miami Lyric Opera, under the artistic guidance of Raffaele Cardone, is presenting the third and final opera of the 2015 season, Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto. The opera company will debut this season’s production of Rigoletto on Saturday, July 11 at 8 p.m. at the Colony Theatre South Beach. They will play a matinee the next day at 4 p.m., also at the Colony Theatre.
If you can’t make the performance dates in July, there will be two performances next month at well at another venue, the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center (10950 SW 211th St.). Those performances will be at 8 p.m. on Saturday, August 15 and Sunday, August 16. All performances are sung in Italian with English subtitles above the stage.
Rigoletto, an opera in three acts, was inspired by the Victor Hugo play Le roi s’amuse. Set in Mantua in the sixteenth century, the opera revolves around the lecherous Duke of Mantua; Rigoletto, his court jester; and Gilda, Rigoletto’s beautiful daughter. A curse placed upon the Duke and his jester hints at tragic consequences for the lovely and pure heroine, who is kept away from the world and doesn’t even know what her father does for a living.
The cast consists of Nelson Martinez as Rigoletto; Tina Gorina and Gina Galati as Gilda; Miguel Angel Lobato as Duca; Jesse Vargas and Alexander Viera as Borsa; and Alexis Trejo as Sparafucile. Gorina, Lobato and Trejo will be making their Miami Lyric Opera debuts in this production.
Tickets are priced at $37 per person for the Colony Theatre performances and at $27 per person for the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center performances. You can buy them online by going to miamilyricopera.org/rigoletto.
ABOUT MIAMI LYRIC OPERA
The Miami Lyric Opera was first presented to the public on October 31, 2004. In the past 11 years, the opera company has performed over 20 distinct operas, usually in the French and Italian styles, over 100 times. The Miami Lyric Opera hopes to educate South Floridians about opera in a not-for-profit environment and also hopes to cultivate operatic talent right here in South Florida. Raffaele Cardone is the general and artistic director. It is sponsored in part by Opera America, Miami Beach, the Knight Foundation, Miami-Dade County and Culture Builds Florida. For more information, visit miamilyricopera.org.
