Quanto affetto! Quali cure!

Having both a special ticket price offer, and severe opera withdrawal symptoms, I found myself at the Met again last night, for the season's first Rigoletto, with Lado Ataneli, Christine Schäfer, and Francesco Meli in Otto Schenk's production (the fullest spread of photographs, from the '05-'06 season, may be found here.)  Rumor has it that the next outing will be a new production, and soon, news which I must confess to greeting with some sense of relief after last night.  Now, I'm deeply attached to Schenk's venerable Ring, but his Rigoletto never convinced me that it was anything more than merely monumental, a massive, static backdrop for the singers.  The blocking was fairly static too; the worst moment was probably when Rigoletto was pleading "scorrer fa il pianto sul mio cor" from halfway across the stage.  Renaissance architecture and costumes were indeed very beautiful, and the backdrop of gradual dawn over the Italian countryside in Act II looked as lovely as gradual dawn over the Italian countryside; but I'm afraid I must damn poor Otto Schenk with faint praise in this instance.  Oh! and as long as we're being traditional, couldn't we have a door that isn't invisible at the top of a giant staircase for when our hunchback is frenziedly yelling "Ah! la porta! assassini!"?