Director David Cox made the opening scene a little musical-comedy-like, with everyone giving focus to the Duke from his first entrance, missing the fluidity and multiple levels that Verdi built into the scene. The little canzona, ”Questa o quella" should be a private joke, not an "opening number," in which the Duke plucks women off of the arms of their consorts while everyone watches. For the Duke maintains outward proprieties and, later in the scene, chides his jester for overstepping the bounds of fair play. Elsewhere, Cox kept the action moving smartly along.

In Hector Vasquez, Festival Opera has a powerful and experienced singer to offer in the opera's title role. If anything, his voice is a little too heavy for the more intimate Hofmann Theatre. His interpretation sacrificed finesse to a heavily underlined violence of spirit, which may explain why "Cortigiani, vil razza" was more satisfying than the following prayer. The baritone was fighting some vocal difficulties which became apparent in the second act. However, the slight rasp created another vocal color, and when his voice nearly broke in the final duet with Gilda, the scene received an unanticipated emotional charge.

As an actor, Vasquez was slightly too antic from the beginning, even for this role. Rigoletto's rage is not sufficiently differentiated from his normal animosity towards his courtier antagonists. Curiously, "Cortigiani vil razza" got a boost because he started it tired and disheveled, almost defeated, from the couch where the courtiers have just flung him.

Marnie Breckenridge, as Gilda, was exceptionally sure of tone and pitch, and displayed a good sense of line. It is always difficult for a modern, experienced woman to portray Gilda without affectation, but Breckenridge managed the trick. She provided a needed balance to Vasquez' Rigoletto, but persuasively conveyed Gilda's emotional life.

Todd Geer's Duke was blunt, unseductive and stolid — but I suspect that this is partly the director's fault. (Cox sets out a worldweary and cruel Duke, in the staged prelude to Act One.) Geer's voice is strong and I liked the occasional mix of head voice in his tone, as in the cadenza to his rendition of "La donna è mobile." His love scene with Gilda, and his aria "Parmi veder le lagrime" at the beginning of Act Two needed more dynamic control and suavity. He is active and involved onstage but, overall, it was impossible to believe that he was either European nobility or attractive to women.

Bojan Knezevic was a forceful, emotionally appealing Monterone, a role he was apparently born to play. Kirk Eichelberger was spooky as the Burgundian assassin Sparafucile; Layna Chianakas was a sexy, smoky-voiced Maddalena; David Britton a physically imposing Marullo.

Michael Morgan's conducting was superb and the orchestra playing was precise, apart from a couple of tricky, exposed passages for the violins. The chorus, under the direction of John Kendall Bailey and David Kurtenbach, was crisp and well balanced.