In 1982, the ever-provocative stage director Jonathan Miller famously put Verdi's Rigoletto into a time machine and hit the 1950s button, while turning on an equivalent geography-spinner.
As a result, this opera about love, hedonism, physical deformity, paternal devotion and the cruelty of fate in 16th-century Mantua took place in a Mafiosi-milieu of New York's Little Italy.
Rigoletto Opera Vivente, 8 p.m. Thursday and Saturday at Emmanuel Episcopal Church, 811 Cathedral St. Tickets $22-$42. Call 410-547-7997.
