Rigoletto

Rigoletto

Melodramma in three acts (1851)

Music

Giuseppe Verdi

Libretto

Francesco Maria Piave

After Victor Hugo, Le Roi s'amuse

In italian

Set design

Christian Schmidt

Costume design

Christian Schmidt

Choreography

Teresa Rotemberg

Lighting design

Olaf Winter

Dramaturgy

Konrad Kuhn

Video

Andi A. Müller

Chorus master

José Luis Basso

Orchestre et Choeurs de l’Opéra national de Paris

French and English surtitles

With the support of AROP
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"The moment of vengeance has finally come. For thirty da ys I have waited, Weeping tears of blood, behind the mask of a buffoon."
Rigoletto, Acte III

In Victor Hugo’s luxuriant drama Le Roi s’amuse, Verdi found theatre worthy of Shakespeare. Such, at least, were his enthusiastic words when he urged his librettist Piave to scour all Venice to find someone with sufficient influence to get his new opera past the censors unscathed. Alas, conventional morality rose up in protest and it proved impossible. Verdi’s hunchbacked jester is one of the most complex and tormented figures in the entire operatic repertoire: monstrous and heartbreaking, grotesque and sublime, this tragically doomed father who seeks to save his daughter from the clutches of the duke, will be the one to kill her. The role reaches its apogee in the aria “Cortigiani, vil razza dannata”, in which the descending movement, from Rigoletto’s explosion of rage to his begging, confirms Verdi’s capacity to adapt traditional bel canto to the demands of theatrical verisimilitude. This is director Claus Guth’s first production for the Paris Opera.

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