Rigoletto at Opera Holland Park review: a convention-busting production with a female gaze

Cecilia Stinton’s new staging provides fresh insight into this problematic canon opera
OHP Chorus
craig fuller
Barry Millington31 May 2023

Cecilia Stinton’s new staging of Rigoletto, opening the season at Opera Holland Park, is the third production I’ve seen in under a fortnight in which a talented female director grapples with a problematic canonic opera. Following Deborah Warner’s Wozzeck (ROH) and Mariame Clément’s Don Giovanni (Glyndebourne), Stinton’s Rigoletto situates the libidinous activities of the Duke of Mantua and his court in a Bullingdon-style establishment in the Jazz Age.

OHP’s stagings generally tack to the traditional, but Stinton’s (designed by Neil Irish, lit by Jake Wiltshire) is one of the most thought- and convention-provoking I’ve seen at the W8 address. The provocations begin with the opening offstage dance music, here an upbeat, recorded dance band rendition to accompany what looks like a mildly depraved summer ball. The sense of an “entitled elite” (to quote Paul Hastie’s surtitles) taking its pleasures is unmistakable.

Also refreshing is the questioning of sometimes unconvincing stage contrivances such as the blindfolding of Rigoletto during the abduction of his daughter. Here it is equated with myopia and Rigoletto takes his spectacles out of his pocket when it’s too late.

Here too Rigoletto is not a hunchback: with his leg in a brace and a walking stick for support, his infirmity could be the result of infant polio or perhaps a war wound. The effect is to heighten our sympathy for him as a victim of a privileged mob.

Hannah Pedley as Maddalena and Alessandro Scotto di Luzio as The Duke of Mantua
Craig Fuller

Meanwhile the Duke’s predations – with Gilda, Maddalena and unnamed others – are observed from a woman’s point of view and the arc of Gilda’s ensnarement is sensitively traced. The role of the heroine is impressively taken by Alison Langer, combining beauty of tone with security of technique. Stephen Gadd, playing Rigoletto with more dignity than usual, but exploiting a half-voice to expressive effect, is admirable in the title role.

As the Duke, Alessandro Scotto di Luzio brings to bear an immediacy and fast-vibrato penetration of tone that border on stridency in the upper register, where the intonation can be somewhat wayward too. Simon Wilding and Hannah Pedley are excellent as Sparafucile and Maddalena, and Matthew Stiff an imposing Monterone.

Lee Reynolds’ crisply paced conducting, in conjunction with the inventively choreographed production, maintained a vibrant dramatic momentum. Effective use is made of the upstage and downstage spaces which encompass the orchestra, the enlarged stage area allowing some imaginative directorial touches, such as the Duke’s seduction of Gilda even as his entourage taunts Rigoletto. We’re left in no doubt that his assault becomes coercive and painfully penetrative, which paradoxically adds poignancy to Gilda’s retained empathy for him.

Stephen Gadd as Rigoletto and Alison Langer as Gilda
Craig Fuller

Gilda enters, through the audience, somewhat rebelliously in the first act, concealing a bottle, before adopting the demure mien expected by her father. After her murder, Rigoletto pitifully clasps the sacking that became her shroud, while a transfigured Gilda slowly exits back through the audience. It’s a persuasive, and moving, solution to the potentially sentimental textual prescription of her looking towards her arrival in heaven.

Opera Holland Park, to June 24; operahollandpark.com

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