Royal Opera House; Barbican, LondonOne grisly moment aside, Oliver Mears’s first ROH production feels like a straightforward Rigoletto made to last. And a Julian Anderson world premiere is the timely centrepiece of the LSO’s season opener
Titian’s seductive Venus of Urbino dominates the opulent court of the rapacious Duke of Mantua in the first act of the Royal Opera’s new production of Verdi’s Rigoletto. Later it’s replaced by the Rape of Europa by the same artist. We know that in real life the 16th-century duke was a noted collector – and that Charles I snapped up several bargains when Mantua hit hard times – but neither of these images were ever in Mantua, or indeed Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of St Matthew, seen in a subverted tableau as the curtain rises. No matter. The message is clear: the Duke views
Women as commodities, whether on canvas or cotton sheets.
This is director of opera Oliver Mears’s debut production for the Royal Opera, and, surprisingly, it’s the first time that the company’s
music director, Antonio Pappano, has conducted Rigoletto in his two decades at Covent Garden. They make a solid partnership, producing a performance that serves the music admirably and rarely gets in the way of Verdi’s sweepingly dramatic score. Barring one act of gratuitous, singular cruelty, lifted from King Lear and introduced to underline Mears’s concept that the Duke is a dangerous psychopath, this is a remarkably straight production and obviously built to last, replacing David McVicar’s licentious staging, first seen in 2001.