Review | Verdi’s Rigoletto: vivid acting, natural singing in Opera Hong Kong production that erred on the dark side
- A work of startling relevance in the MeToo era, Rigoletto requires the right balance between the forces of light and darkness, one not quite achieved here
- Roberto Frontali sang with power and control in title role, Audrey Luna made Gilda convincingly innocent, and young tenor Pavel Petrov is a star in the making
For an opera that had its premiere in 1851, Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto has a startling relevancy in the era of #MeToo, and Opera Hong Kong’s new production presents a powerful portrait of a world where men abuse women as a matter of routine and the wicked go unpunished.
The hunchback Rigoletto is jester to the Duke of Mantua, whose favourite pastime is seducing women (including the wives and daughters of his courtiers) whom he then discards – his passion is the hunt, and once the prey has been caught, he loses interest.
When the aged Count Monterone confronts the Duke over his rape of Monterone’s daughter, Rigoletto mocks him to please his master but is filled with fear when the old man puts a curse on him. The punishment fits the crime when Rigoletto’s own beloved daughter, Gilda, becomes the Duke’s victim.
Desperate to avenge his daughter’s dishonour, Rigoletto hires hitman Sparafucile to kill the Duke but Gilda, still in love with the man who cheated and betrayed her, sacrifices herself and dies in his place.
Although it’s based on a play by one of literature’s great moralists, Victor Hugo, it’s hard to call this relentlessly dark work a morality tale. The good (Gilda, Monterone) are destroyed while the bad (the lecherous Duke and his venal courtiers, Sparafucile and his sister Maddalena, who has sex with men so her brother can kill them) survive unscathed and flourish.