“James Conlon steps up and slaps the defibrillator onto Verdi’s corpse. He raises his baton and reminds the room that Rigoletto doesn’t need saving—just brains and guts at the podium. His reading of the score is tight, alive, and refreshingly unsentimental. The orchestra snaps into action, coiled and precise, then opens like a flower beneath Gilda’s lines. When Rigoletto hurls curses, the brass bite back. When Gilda dreams, the strings sigh with her until the dream is crushed. Not flashy baton-twirling. It’s structural support. Without him, this Rigoletto would collapse under the weight of its own ideas.”– Stage and Cinema

“This “Rigoletto” closes Conlon’s penultimate season as L.A. Opera music director. Seemingly born to conduct Verdi, Conlon can whip up as much dramatic excitement as anyone might need. But he has in recent years taken a more expansive approach to Verdi. His restraint and reserved pacing classes up some of the cheaper tricks of the production and, more important, gives perspective to it most powerful ones. Listening to the elegant orchestra, the clown suit didn’t seem so bad.” – LA Times

“From the ominous orchestral prelude that inaugurates Monterone’s curse to the buoyant melodies, tender duets and arias and on to the catastrophic storm and murderous conclusion, Conlon conducted with the surehandedness and artistry we have come to expect from this peerless interpreter of Verdi’s music.” – Seen and Heard International

“James Conlon’s conducting was supple, sensitive and exciting.  The orchestral playing had the fluid and spontaneous feel of a small-town Italian house orchestra.  The limpid, steady first flute in Gilda’s aria and the robust, full-throated first cello in Rigoletto’s scena were among the many memorable orchestral highlights.  The score is presented complete – full versions of “Ah! Veglia, o donna”, Rigoletto-Gilda duet, Gilda-Duke’s farewell, and both verses of Duke’s aria  “Possente amor”.  Even the coda for “Caro nome” ends in high B natural as Verdi wrote it, not high E as printed in some corrupt editions.” – Classical Voice