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Archives — Lyrical

Rigoletto

Verdi

22 June – 01 July 2021

The time for vengeance has come. I've been waiting thirty days, crying tears of blood behind my jester's mask.Rigoletto

How could a jester ever make a King tremble? Above all, monsters reveal the monstrosity of the societies that engender them. Thus the July Monarchy could not tolerate the mirror held up to it by Le Roi s'amuse: the day after the premiere on 22 November 1832, the censors sealed the fate of Victor Hugo's tragedy.

Twenty years later, Verdi saw in Triboulet's antics a theatre worthy of Shakespeare and set about turning it into an opera. With Rigoletto, which would become the first part of his popular trilogy, the composer accomplished his revolution: bel canto yielded to the necessities of drama. In the dismal night of Mantua, song expresses the grace and the ugliness, the sublime and the absurdity of this accursed jester who wants to save his daughter and ultimately kills her.

Recognising all the force of a dance of death in this music, Richard Brunel sets his staging within the strict and hierarchical framework of a ballet - a place of excellence and rivalry - he replaces the deformed body of the jester with the invisible violence of normalized, carefully selected and mutilated bodies. Never stealing the drama from the eyes of this micro-society, he endeavours to reconstruct a story of revenge, from repression to the final deed.

Cast

Rigoletto, opera in three acts
Performed at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, March 11, 1851

New production Opéra national de Lorraine

Coproduction Opéra de Rouen Normandie, Opéra de Toulon, Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg

Libretto
Francesco Maria Piave, d’après la pièce de Victor Hugo, Le Roi s’amuse

Music
Giuseppe Verdi

 
Conductor

Alexander Joel

Lorraine National Opera Orchestra

Choirmaster

Guillaume Fauchère

Lorraine National Opera Chorus


Director

Richard Brunel

Sets

Etienne Pluss

Costumes

Thibault Vancraenenbroeck

Lighting

Laurent Castaingt

Dramaturgy

Catherine Ailloud Nicolas

Maxime Thomas

Choregraphy
Director assistant

Alex Crestey

Scénography assistant

Clémence de Vergnette

Costumes assistant

Nathalie Pallandre


The Duke of Mantua

Alexey Tatarintsev

Rigoletto

Juan Jesús Rodríguez

Gilda

Rocío Pérez

Gilda's mother

Agnès Letestu (Danseuse étoile

of the Opéra de Paris)

 
Sparafucile

Őnay Köse

Maddalena

Francesca Ascioti

Count Monterone

Pablo Lopez

Marullo

Francesco Salvadori

Borsa

Bo Zhao

Count Ceprano

Samuel Namotte

Giovanna

Aline Martin

A Page

Inna Jeskova

Countess Ceprano

Jue Zhang

Dancers

Adèle Borde, Eliot Chevalme, Gianni Illiaquer, Rémy Kouadio, 
Olivia Lindon, Joséphine Meunier

With the support of

Gallery

See also

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