What about Rigoletto, if Giuseppe Verdi had written his famous arias in New Orleans during the Golden Era of Jazz or in the sparkling musical scene of New York in the 70s? Francesco Chebat takes up this peculiar challenge and tries to imagine how this would have been. This project was made specially for Bergamo Music Festival 2010, promoted by Fondazione Donizetti wich asked Francesco Chebat to work on Rigoletto expressing his personal point of view. Chebat took parts of the Verdi’s opera, not only from the most famous arias, but also from hidden and unexplored musical elements, and worked on them like they were modern pieces.
This is not simply a re-reading in a jazzy way, it is a re-writing of the musical material in the modern forms, in the slang the jazz has developed in the last fifty years. It is an imaginary trip that takes in account the relation between different times and cultures. “I aim to create a sort of virtual dimension,” Chebat says, “trying to imagine what Rigoletto could have been, if Verdi were not born close to Parma in the 19th century, but in the US during the second half of the 20th century!”
“Improvising on Rigoletto” offers a personal and original vision that, like a timemachine, goes beyond the time, the space, the musical genres and tries to honour the Great Maestro from Busseto.