Aurelio Dominguez steps into the meaty role of the Duke of Mantua in Virginia Opera’s season opener, “Rigoletto,” excited by his good fortune. While filling in last summer for an ailing singer at the request of a local amateur group, he came to the attention of Joseph Walsh, the company’s associate conductor and chorus master. Walsh happened to be in attendance to present a master class and cornered Dominguez afterward, saying, “We have to talk.”
The upshot was a meeting with Peter Mark, VO’s founder and artistic director, and an invitation to become a member of the company’s Spectrum Resident Artist program. For the first VO production last season, he covered the tenor role of Rodolfo in “La Boheme” while singing Parpignol, followed by covering Tonio in “Daughter of the Regiment” and singing the role of A Peasant. Now he is starring as the roue who inadvertently causes the death of the woman he truly loves, daughter of the court jester Rigoletto.
“They say that the Duke is a despicable man, but I have a different view of him,” he said. “He certainly is immature, not ready to start a family and he still has issues to work out. Although he doesn’t take marriage seriously, in many ways he is good because he actually loved Gilda. For her, he was willing to throw his power out the window. That perspective of him comes out when they sing ‘Caro nome.’ ”
Dominguez’s character had to be renamed by composer Giuseppe Verdi when the censors complained. Regarded today as one of Verdi’s finest, the opera was among several for which a change in the story line was necessary. Verdi based the “Rigoletto” libretto on a story by Victor Hugo that depicted a king of France as an immoral womanizer. This was not acceptable to northern European censors during the Restoration period, so he overcame their objections by turning the character into an Italian duke.
Dominguez earned this coveted role after a long, accidental journey to the Washington area. Growing up in Caracas, Venezuela, he studied viola at the local conservatory. Between lessons, he chatted with the voice teacher in the next room who encouraged him to develop his tenor voice. Good fortune soon arrived in the person of Kathleen Wilson, a specialist in Latin American art songs, who was on sabbatical leave from the University of New Hampshire. Impressed with his voice, she was instrumental in helping him get a scholarship there.
“I want the Virginia Opera audience to discover that the Duke of Mantua is not really a bad person, even though he is socially dysfunctional,” Dominguez said. “Because women throw themselves at him, his ego is so big that the group he surrounds himself with all want to be like him. On the plus side, his three arias suit my voice perfectly. They are well-paced and among the finest Verdi ever wrote.”
