
Helene Schjerfbeck, Rigoletto, credit Wikidata
Rigoletto, Opera Holland Park
Rigoletto, Opera Holland Park, June 3rd 2023; opera in three acts with music composed by Giuseppe Verdi, Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave; a new production by Opera Holland Park, directed by Cecilia Stinton; the City of London Orchestra and Opera Holland Park Chorus conducted by Lee Reynolds; reviewed by Leslie Jones
John Allison considers ‘La donna è mobile’ a ‘Me Too tune’ (see ‘Flecks of Light in a Renaissance Painting’, Official Programme). The Duke of Mantua, played by tenor Allesandro Scotto di Luzio, is a cynical misogynist, so cynical that he assumes that Rigoletto’s daughter Gilda must be his mistress. ‘Woman is fickle’, he proclaims in the aforementioned aria, ‘like a feather in the wind’.
Here, Sigmund Freud meets John Stuart Mill. For according to historian Thomas Dixon, the Duke is in thrall to ‘an excessive form of carnal appetite’, to wit, ‘concupiscence’ (see ‘Lust’, Official Programme). Women have only one use, and innocence, as represented by the overly-protected Gilda, constitutes a challenge, or even an aphrodisiac. ‘Women are cunning little demons, the Duke contends. And evidently disposable items, to be duped, or abducted and raped, if all else fails’ (see Leslie Jones, ‘Rigoletto, reloaded’, Quarterly Review, 8th February, 2017). Evil is all the more toxic when conjoined to power. Verdi had no time for what Theodor Fontane called ‘auxiliary constructions’, i.e. for religion and its consolations (Fontane, as cited by Freud in Civilisation and Its Discontents).
All the world’s a stage. The western world seems to be “governed” by rigoletti, but they are not funny. Their subjects, with modest minor exceptions in the USA, France and Italy, seem to be suffering from electoral rigor mortis. In Britain, funds have poured into the next act from the likes of Lubner, Sainsbury, Blank, Chinn and Hearn, with advice from Mandelson, Miliband and McFadden.
Phony Tony – deja vu? This time, however, the “socialist” stooge dancing on “capitalist” strings is more of a wooden dummy.