Visionary director Marthinus Basson launches Cape Town Opera’s 2017 season with an unflinching new staging of Verdi’s dark melodrama Rigoletto. Metropolitan Opera regular Fikile Mvinjelwa returns to Cape Town to play the hunchbacked jester, with Belvedere Singing Competition finalists Noluvuyiso Mpofu and Lukhanyo Moyake making their role debuts as his daughter Gilda and the licentious Duke of Mantua.
This explosive meeting of South Africa’s foremost young singers with a veteran theatrical innovator, united under the masterful baton of Maestro Kamal Khan, promises to thrill and chill in equal measure.
Rigoletto at a glance (warning – spoiler alert): Rigoletto is a hunchback jester who is desperate to hide his daughter, Gilda, from his lecherous employer, the Duke. However she has secretly fallen in love with the man (who has disguised himself as a student). After Gilda has been violated in the Duke’s court, Rigoletto vows revenge, but his daughter overhears his plans and sacrifices herself to save her lover, leaving her father brokenhearted.
Marthinus Basson is an actor, photographer and director and designer, currently at the University of Stellenbosch Drama Department. He is a multiple-award-winner for his striking and sometimes controversial interpretations as designer, writer and director. His work includes new South African premières of plays by Afrikaans poets such as Breyten Breytenbach and Antjie Krog, and acclaimed South African playwrights such as Reza de Wet and Willem Anker. His international work includes The Fall of the House of Usher and Boks for ARCA in Ghent, Belgium; Tall Horse for the Handspring Puppet Company, which toured America and Germany after its opening at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, and Beethoven’s Fidelio for Opera Queensland in Australia. His over 42 awards include including the South African Academy’s Award for Contribution to South African Theatre, the Nederburg Opera Award for Cavaliera Rusticana and the Fleur du Cap Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.
South Africa’s foremost baritone, Fikile Mvinjelwa, has sung for President Nelson Mandela, President Thabo Mbeki and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. His wide range of roles include the title roles in Rigoletto and Nabucco, Griot in Masque, Porgy in Porgy and Bess, Orestes in Elektra, Zurga in The Pearl Fishers, Germont in La Traviata, Scarpia in Tosca, Amonasro in Aida, Alfio in Cavalleria Rusticana and Tonio in I Pagliacci for Cape Town Opera.
He has sung at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Spoleto Festival, amongst numerous engagements.
Mvinjelwa’s many oratorio performances include the TRC (South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission) Rewind Cantata by Phillip Miller at the Brooklyn Festival in Prospect Park, NY and at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
Where and when: Artscape on February 11, 14, 16, 18.
Book: Computicket
Watch: Fikile Mvinjelwa discusses his love of opera
WS
