The University of Findlay will host a performance of the Toledo Opera at 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 24, in Winebrenner Theological Seminary, as part of the 2008-2009 Concert & Lecture Series.
   
Tickets are $25 for general admission, $20 for senior citizens, $15 for UF faculty and staff members and free to UF students. Call the UF Box Office at 419-434-5335.
   
Directed by Renay Conlin, the performance will feature Rachel Watkins, soprano, Audrey Babcock, mezzo-soprano, Yoonsoo Shin, tenor, Jason Stearns, baritone, Randall Jacobsch, bass, and Keith Chambers, pianist. Cast members of “A Rigoletto Tapestry” by Giuseppe Verdi will perform a preview of the full opera, which will open in Toledo two weeks following the Findlay performance.
   
When Verdi was a young man and newly arrived in Milan with his family, he experienced a great tragedy that was to mark the rest of his personal and creative life. In the span of a few short years, his wife and both his children, a son and daughter, died tragically of mysterious fevers. Understandably, the loss nearly drove the young composer into complete and utter despair.

In the midst of his grief he was forced to complete a comic opera that had already been commissioned. Not surprisingly, “Un Giorno di Regno” was a failure and left the young composer vowing never to compose again. But a chance encounter with Ricordi, the great music publisher, brought the composer’s self-imposed absence from the stage to an end.

The theme of fathers and daughters, and parents and children in general, figures prominently in many of Verdi’s operas. Of the 28 operas he composed, many of them explore the theme of parental love in its many guises.

In Rigoletto, the father is a reviled and deformed man, shunned and mocked by society, and in possession of a cruel and mocking wit in his role as court jester to the Duke of Mantua’s court. He is nevertheless portrayed as deeply human and selfless in his love for his only daughter, Gilda, whom he keeps isolated and under guard, protecting her from the lecherous reaches of the Duke’s court.
   
This performance is made possible, in part, through the generosity of Dr. George Whitson and Mrs. Shirlee Whitson, Whitson Properties, Country Inn & Suites and Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites.