She wasn't supposed to perform in Verdi's 'Rigoletto' at the COC. It's a star-making turn for the ages

But Carroll’s late withdrawal from the production meant Dufresne stepped in for director Christopher Alden’s polarizing staging of the Verdi classic, last performed by the COC in 2018. (She shares the role with fellow Canadian soprano Andriana Chuchman, who plays Gilda in the final three shows of this run.) 

Dufresne, a Niagara Falls native who burst onto the scene in 2022 when she placed second in the aria division of the Montreal International Music Competition and whose previous credits include roles at the Vancouver Opera and Opéra de Montréal, makes her COC debut in a star-making, “bravissima”-worthy turn.

Dufresne’s rendition of “Caro nome” at the end of Act One, in which Gilda professes her love for the Duke, whom she’s led to believe is a fellow student, is delivered without a hint of effort, her voice landing on each note like church bells piercing through the cold, bone-chilling air. There’s no hesitation as she transitions between her chest voice and her head voice, floating into the upper end of her range with a serene, almost hypnotizing, weightlessness. 

Gilda, of course, is a challenging role. Written for a coloratura soprano vocal type, the part calls for both lyric agility and dramatic intensity that can navigate the score’s serpentine melodic passages. 

On opening night, it took some time for Dufresne to settle into the role. Early in the first act, some shaky breath support compromised several moments of musical phrasing. The soprano was also occasionally overpowered by the brass-heavy orchestral accompaniment. (This remount is conducted by COC music director Johannes Debus.)

But when Dufresne found her form, she sustained it through the very end of Verdi’s three-act thriller — and at a level that rivals some of the best performances I’ve seen in recent memory at the Four Seasons Centre.

These days, a COC debut of this magnitude, from a Canadian artist, is rare. Typically, the company’s biggest Canadian stars — like Krisztina Szabó, Wallis Giunta and Emily D’Angelo — slowly rise up through the organization’s ranks, many of them graduates of the COC Ensemble Studio training program. But that Dufresne is largely unknown among Toronto audiences, having come up through the Montreal pipeline, makes her COC debut all the more surprising and impressive. 

As for the rest of Alden’s remount — much has already been written in these pages over the years about his controversial staging, which premiered in Toronto in 2011. (To be fair, this production is relatively tame compared with some of the American director’s other, more gonzo operatic takes.)

Toronto designer Michael Levine sets the action in a Victorian-era men’s club, complete with gas lamps and oak-panelled walls, with patrons reading newspapers and puffing on cigars. In this smoky locale, Alden evokes the stifling, testosterone-fuelled world of the patriarchy, running rampant with unchecked power and unfettered desire.

With this framing, Alden not only counterbalances some of the problematic themes in Verdi’s work, with a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, but also offers an almost meta-theatrical acknowledgment of the inherent misogyny in this opera, which portrays women as dim-witted and submissive to those who violate them. (Gilda doesn’t just fall for the Duke. She then — spoiler — sacrifices her life for his.) 

But Alden’s high-concept treatment has its faults. In staging the entire show on a single set, with all the scenes unfolding in the same place, he scrambles some of the opera’s narrative threads. In the first act, for instance, Gilda is supposed to be sheltered by Rigoletto from the outside world. But that’s never clear in this staging. 

One way to interpret Alden’s production is that he’s presenting “Rigoletto” as a psychological drama, all unfolding inside the mind of its Byronic anti-hero. The Duke, in this case, is not Rigoletto’s boss, and Gilda is not his daughter, but instead two opposing facets of Rigoletto’s personality. 

The former represents the darkness within him — and that primal need for revenge. And the latter, who is ultimately defeated, symbolizes the purity of his soul.

The production’s highly stylized, expressionistic esthetic certainly supports this idea. In one scene, we watch a procession of mourners shrouded in black, like disembodied souls rising up from the underworld. And in several vignettes, added by Alden and serving as entr’actes, we watch Rigoletto and Gilda locked in a struggle for domination.

Quinn Kelsey’s phenomenal performance as Rigoletto also lends itself to this interpretation. His rich baritone, vowels coiled with torment, barrels headfirst into the depths of Tartarus. And when he’s not singing, he’s often perched on an armchair downstage left, peering in agony into the abyss. 

Ben Bliss’s Duke is like a parasite latching onto its host, his bouncing rendition of the famous “La donna è mobile” song ratcheting up Rigoletto’s torment with each reprise. 

But if Alden was really going for a psychodramatic interpretation, he could lean even further into this expressionistic style. Rather than fully embracing it, his production, as it stands, merely feels like a tentative exploration of that idea.

But then again, for Alden, who sometimes goes overboard with ideas that risk detracting from the music, maybe this isn’t a bad thing. After all, in this production, we get to bask in the glorious voices of Dufresne, Kelsey and Bliss.