Weston Hurt, David Kempster, ENO’s Rigoletto 2024 © Tristram Kenton
English National Opera / Richard Farnes
London Coliseum, October 30th 2024
Forty-two years old it may be, but Jonathan Miller’s splendid updating of Verdi’s great opera to a 1950s mafia family still cuts the mustard. But then why should it not? Miller (d2019) was a director of genius, cutting his teeth in Olivier’s National Theatre company before moving on to opera; the gangster Rigoletto was his first great success—and still hold its own. Of course, the story itself is not particularly wedded to any time or even country, starting life in Victor Hugo’s politically charged Le Roi s’amuse in 1832, itself looking back at the rakish sixteenth-century French monarch François I (he of the Field of Cloth of Gold fame, with our own Henry VIII, no slouch in the rakishness department, either). Verdi’s recasting to the court of Mantua in the mid-nineteenth century, then, is only one possible context. As far as the mechanic of Verdi’s operatic setting go, Miller took few liberties.
This was the fourteenth revival of the production, the first since 2017, and was once again directed by Elaine Tyler-Hall who has been in charge for most since 2006. The sets still looked good, whether the bar of the Mantuan court that opens both acts, the environs of Rigoletto’s house where he keeps his daughter, Gilda, safe from the outside world, or Sparafucile’s riverside bar where the denouement unfolds. The designs by the late Patrick Robinson (d2009) and Rosemary Vercoe (d2016) looked as on point as they must have done bac in 1982.
Directing the ENO Orchestra, on terrific form as always, was Richard Farnes: not just a very dependable pair of hands on the podium but an interpreter of real insight who ENO would do well to appoint as Music Director, a post still unfilled since Martyn Brabbins resigned in protest last season. The vocal cast assembled were all fine to a man—and woman—although some of the best singing came from some of the smaller roles, not Sarah-Lane Lewis as Rigoletto’s perfidious housekeeper, Giovanna, and David Kempster’s strong baritone, rather under-used as the rival mafioso, Monterone. Best of all was William Thomas, as the bartender-cum-contract killer Sparafucile, whose baleful presence lowers over the entire production.
As the lead, Weston Hurt dominated proceedings, bringing more to this complex character than just cantankerousness and (admittedly biting) sarcasm. As his daughter, Gilda, Robyn Allegra Parton was sweetness and innocence personified, though I found her vibrato a little off-putting in the first half—until her seduction by Yongzhao Yu’s rather wooden, uncharismatic Duke, after which she sings, as Verdi intended, closer to straight tone. While Yongzhao’s tenor was strong enough to not be overpowered by Verdi’s orchestration, his diction sadly was sub-optimal, and one needed the overhead projection to check what was being sung.
In terms of plot, the Duke is the weak link also. What do Gilda and Sparafucile’s sister, Maddalena, see I him? Giovanna’s betrayal of her master in bring the Duke and Gilda together is not overly convincing, either; is it just the lure of gold? The final scene passes off reasonably well, with the dukebox joke with La duona e mobile still working, and tensions between Sparafucile and Maddalena, Rigoletto and Gilda nicely caught. On balance, then, this was a good revival (if not quite the sum of its parts) of a fine production that still retains its power to move.