I like to try to solve the puzzle myself before "looking up the answer in the back of the book". Lucia wanted to marry outside her mother's wishes--who had a plan to help strengthen their clan. She was fragile, and didn't take the deceptions well.
If they wanted it in the modern US, maybe a topical social justice setting would be in an immigrant Brahmin family whose daughter wants to marry outside the caste. Or a Boston Cabot or Lodge, though that might be a bit dated.
Ah--just the thing: The daughter of a NY publisher and a Harvard sociology professor wants to marry a Republican. Although--that choice of settings might reduce donations and bequests, so maybe it needs to be flipped around--for purely artistic reasons, you understand. Reactionary industrialist whose daughter wants to marry a union organizer? I'm not sure where you find reactionary industrialists anymore, though.
So, downscale it from nobility to down-at-heels middle class--somebody deplorable. The conflict? Political differences still work. Racism would work for them--all deplorables are racist™. Edgardo is a tenor, so that rules out another option. I wonder what source material they'd use to learn about those strange people.
Peeking at the back: It isn't obvious. It looks like they are using scenery, and not trying to match the social setting--except insofar as the Scottish setting was semi-barbarous.
Resetting Rigoletto to Las Vegas seems perfectly reasonable--the powerful do whatever they like no matter where they are.
4 comments:
As a theater major from the 1970s, I am suspecting you are spot on. When they get topical, they can only see it from one perspective, which they think is modern and controversial, but is actually very dated and predictable.
I think "deplorable" is going to go the same way as "undesirable", with connotations of "The greater good demands that you be treated as subhuman."
@Korora,
While that maybe true, that's not the point here. The point here is that some stories are easier to update than others. One can easily reset Romeo and Juliet in 1855 Bleeding Kansas, but it's much more difficult to put Henry VIII in 1985 New York City.
I was in the Madison Savoyards' 2004 production of Ruddigore, re-set in 1960's Carnaby Street. The stage was the only setting in which I'd be caught dead in love beads.
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