Review: Rigoletto, by Welsh National Opera, at Birmingham Hippodrome

Jul 8 2010 By Richard Bratby

Rigoletto, performed by the Welsh National Opera, at Birmingham Hippodrome

James Macdonald’s Welsh National Opera production of Verdi’s Rigoletto was first seen in 2002, to mixed opinions. 

Eight years on, however, and post-Mad Men and The Sopranos, Macdonald’s updating to Kennedy-era Washington DC seems spot-on – the natural setting for a drama that lays bare human nature at its most unremittingly flawed.

When the protagonists are wearing smartly-cut suits, it’s that bit harder to view sexual assault and contract-killing as the stuff of picturesque period drama. 

Details rang chillingly true: Monterone, sectioned and sedated, absolving the Duke from a wheelchair; the courtiers’ serial-killer clown-masks looming through the darkness beyond Gilda’s security-fenced backyard.

This was profoundly troubling music drama, heightened by the fact that the central performances were uniformly strong. 

Simon Keenlyside’s tremendous, clenched Rigoletto sounded almost too glorious, while Gwyn Hughes Jones’ Duke, for all the star-quality of his tenor, left you in no doubt that his sexual magnetism derived from his power, not his personality.

Sarah Coburn, as an impulsive, vulnerable Gilda, had real fire in her diamond-like soprano. 

With Pablo Heras-Casado’s suave conducting and a WNO orchestra still aglow from the previous night’s Meistersinger, the contrast between musical splendour and moral squalor struck home with unsettling force.