The Stage

Rigoletto

Published Tuesday 10 July 2007 at 17:10 by Edward Bhesania

Verdi’s taut revenge tragedy, directed by David McVicar, gets its third revival by the Royal Opera, and there’s plenty of life in it. The mottled, tilted-facade set could be marble, as befits the court setting, or it could be eroding sheet metal, reflecting the decaying morality as the Duke and his couriers pursue their hedonistic pleasures. Darkly lit throughout, the undercurrents of Monterone’s curse, Rigoletto’s obsession with his daughter’s protection and the wavering loyalties of court politics co-mingle to climax in the last act’s storm-driven murder scene. McVicar has revelled in the grotesque and it makes for a compelling story.

In the title role, Franz Grundheber fails to project the extremes of Rigoletto’s mocking court-jesterly duties and his private fears as well as Paolo Gavanelli in 2001 and 2006, and he occasionally sounded tired at the top. But South Korean tenor Wookyung Kim makes a thrilling Royal Opera debut as the Duke, matching his onstage machismo with vocal effluence. There’s never the hint of him holding back, and so physical and overwhelming is he as he declares attempts to win over Rigoletto’s daughter Gilda, that he practically seduces and deflowers her with his voice alone.

For her part, Patrizia Ciofi’s Gilda is winsomely naive, a daughter in transition between her questionless devotion to her father and a desire for worldly experience. Raymond Aceto maintains a rock-like presence as the assassin Sparafucile and Czech mezzo Jana Skorova makes a notable debut as his sister Maddelena.

Added to this, the Royal Opera orchestra is on fervent form, conducted with immediacy by Renato Palumbo, and so too is the chorus, whose impossibly hushed Zitti, zitti chorus is breathtaking.