I couldn't help thinking how humans could behave in such cruel ways when I saw San Francisco Opera's Opening Night production of Verdi's Rigoletto.
Here, Rigoletto is a fairly simple story, but oh what a story. Feel free to wiki the plot, if you want to learn more about the opera. Rigoletto is the hunchbacked court jester, with a daughter, Gilda that he dotes on and overly protects. That seemingly neurotic over-protection seems justified because, apparently, the populace in Mantua during the sixteenth century have no moral qualms about creeping into people's homes at night and stealing off with a child. It's every man for himself.
There's a Duke, your typical rich bastard and first class player. He catches every girls's eyes, regardless of whether he's robed in his Dukedom's finery or whether he's pretending to be a student. His goal in life, apparently, is to bed down as many women as he can all the while pissing off as many men as he can.
Rigoletto, being the ugly hunchback, is constantly ridiculed. His daughter is believed to be his mistress, so one night, a group of Mantuans (hey, didn't Romeo and Juliet lived in Mantua? What's up with that place? Gang fights, midnight abductions, hired assassins?) come up to Rigoletto's home to steal away his supposed mistress. In fact, they managed to get Rigoletto to help out, by claiming his home was the Countess Ceprano's and they're trying to abduct her instead. "Gee, ok, guys. I'll help hold the ladder while you go abduct the countess. Heh, heheh." Apparently, it's socially acceptable kidnap women. Rape's probably legitimate too, during the sixteenth century in Mantua.
It's a story without a single protagonist. Everyone has a major failing or several. All characters think with their hearts and not their heads. Well, possibly except Sparafucile, the assassin. He thinks purely with his head in regards to how much he'll get paid and how to kill people. But he's a friggin' ASSASSIN. Sometimes, he gets the victim to his home where his sister helps out, so he does think of his sister's well being as well. Yeah, a gruesome lot.
Now, I evoke the relatively modern American construct that is the Tea Party because that was what I kept going back to in my mind when I watched this whole spectacle. You have the Duke-cum-Romney guy who gets to do whatever the hell he pleases, poor people like Rigoletto have no rights, no way to move upwards in life, and his family is treated like chattel. And, to really hit the Tea Party theme, they conspire themselves into living that life. Rigoletto, as pathetic a person as he is, is not above abetting in staging a kidnapping. He's not above paying money to an assassin to knock off the Duke. The assassin's sister wants to hump the Duke, despite the Duke singing the signature aria, La Donna é Mobile, while hanging out with Sparafucile, explaining to her and everyone that he just wants booty from any old gal, and he'll toss her away once for another at a moment's notice. The only sense of community in Mantua, it appears, is when there's more than four ruffians willing to do the same criminal deed at the same time.
Oh, and the music was quite good. The last act's thunder and lightning music was very powerful. The staging was amazing. Harry Silverstein, the director, whom I worked with as a supernumerary for the summer's Magic Flute, did an amazing job with the perspectives and geometric layouts of the stage. The lighting within the town square gave the whole stage a feel of a renaissance painting: very solid primary colors of yellow, red, blue (for the night). Go see it, and contemplate what our country might devolve into if the Tea Party has its way.