Opera On Screen: Rigoletto from Opera de Paris (Opéra Bastille)

Sun July 24 | 3pm, 7pm | $15 | Buy Tickets

RIGOLETTO
Giuseppe Verdi
Libretto by Maria Piave – After Victor Hugo, Le Roi s’amuse

Opera in 3 acts
Sung in Italian

Opera de Paris (Opéra Bastille)
Recorded Spring 2016
Presented by Alain Duault

Approximate Running Time: 2h 5min
Approximate Running Time by Act:
Act I: 60 min
Act II & III: 65 min

CREATIVE TEAM
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Director: Claus Guth
Sets: Christian Schmidt
Costumes: Christian Schmidt
Lighting: Olaf Winter
Choir: Director José Luis Basso

Orchestra and Choir of the Opéra National de Paris ARTISTIC TEAM

Il Duca di Mantova: Michael Fabiano
Rigoletto: Quinn Kelsey
Gilda: Olga Peretyatko
Sparafucile: Rafal Siwek
Maddalena: Vesselina Kasarova
Giovanna: Isabelle Druet
Il Conte di Monterone: Mikhail Kolelishvili
Marullo: Michal Partyka
Matteo Borsa: Christophe Berry
Il Conte di Ceprano: Tiago Matos
La Contessa: Andreea Soare
Paggio della Duchessa: Adriana González
Usciere di Corte: Florent Mbia

Presentation
“Oh! Victor Hugo’s Le Roi s’amuse is the greatest subject, and perhaps the greatest drama of modern times. It’s a work worthy of Shakespeare!” A few months before he wrote those words to Francesco Maria Piave urging him to “turn Venice upside down and persuade the Censor to authorise the subject” – no easy matter given that moral values would be easily offended – Verdi was working on an adaptation of King Lear.

No doubt, he was already imbued with the play by his revered master, Shakespeare, when he read Victor Hugo’s drama. On discovering in the works of the French writer to whom he would owe Ernani, the greatest triumph of his “difficult years”, a parallel with the triangle formed by the King, his daughter and the jester, it was “like a thunderbolt, an inspiration”. Between the frivolous, licentious Duke, and Gilda, a victim of the ignorance which holds her captive, stands the double-faceted character of the hunchback, both buffoon and curse-obsessed father. Monstrous and heartrending, grotesque and sublime, the title role reaches its apogee in the aria “Cortigiani, vil razza dannata”, whose descending movement, from the explosion of rage to the moment of entreaty, confirms the composer’s ability to adapt a form inherited from bel canto to theatrical realism.

Under the baton of Nicola Luisotti, this new production of Rigoletto marks director Claus Guth’s first collaboration with the Paris Opera.