Michael Tanner

Surging energy

issue 23 July 2005

Of the Royal Opera’s Verdi productions of recent years, David McVicar’s seems likely to be the most durable. It evokes and sustains an atmosphere which is entirely suited to the particular tinta of the music that pervades this work, a combination of levity and desperation, glamour and sleaziness, ardent love and lechery. The extraordinary set by Michael Vale, a huge metal revolve which shows on one side the squalor of the Duke’s palace, and on the other the squalor of Rigoletto’s dwelling, the former glinting, the latter matt, transformed in Act III into the squalor of Sparafucile’s inn, manages to be confusing enough to make less implausible than usual the episode in which Rigoletto mistakenly breaks into his own house, under the impression that the blindfold that has been put on him is only the night’s darkness. With absurdities as extreme as that, the only thing is to highlight the intensity of the characters’ feelings and motives to the utmost, and let the plot look after itself.

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