Last Updated on March 26, 2026
Bravado and Bravura in this barnstormer of a production
4.5 out of 5.0 starsOliver Mears’s Rigoletto is back at the Royal Opera House with a revival of his production of Rigoletto.
The story of Rigoletto is adapted from Victor Hugo’s play Le Roi s’Amuse (The King Amuses Himself). Rigoletto’s librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, replaced the king with the Duke of Mantua, who is just as morally bankrupt as the original. The opera premiered in 1851 in Venice and has been a popular production, thanks to its name recognition and one of those golden tunes that almost everybody has heard: ‘La donna è mobile’, which becomes haunting in the context of the actual plot.
The hunchback Rigoletto is repeatedly taught by fate that he cannot escape the curse he receives at the start of the show, which prevents every deed he intends from coming out right. Rigoletto is no saint, however, and this production is keen to remind us of the depravity of Mantua’s imagined sexually lascivious and violent court.
Aida Garifullina gives a soaring and lyrical performance as Gilda. She makes the implausible plausible by tapping into the character’s raw emotion and naivety without ever missing the opportunity to show off her expert singing chops.
Rigoletto, tonight played by George Petean, certainly rises to the occasion with a belter of a performance. Petean deftly balances the more cartoonish court jester and hunchback elements, with the vengeful, grief-stricken father delivering a thoroughly believable performance. His vocals are strong and full of emotion from the first note. The tragedy of the piece is highlighted in his pitiable and self-righteous performance that does duty to Hugo’s second most famous hunchback.
Petean and Garifullina are able to create some beautiful moments between father and daughter; this is the relationship that forms the emotional core of the story. Ivan Ayon Rivas plays the leering, manipulative and completely unrepentant Duke of Mantua well. It was so easy to hate him; I half-expected boos and hisses from the audience at the curtain call. A villain who can still play the romantic with the many women who fall into his web. The assassin Sparafucile, played by William Thomas, slithers around the edges of the story with deadly menace and the sort of tattoos I would expect an assassin to have.
The all-male chorus succeeds in creating a thoroughly unpleasant atmosphere in the court, revealing a sickening society with no redemption or comeuppance. They, along with their leader, the duke, get to continue to sing and dance and murder while Rigoletto cries in the rain.
Mark Elder is at ease in his role as conductor. Verdi’s masterful score, from the lovely cello and oboe duet in the third act to the battering brass that opens and closes the night, is all there with brass knobs on
Set designer Simon Lima Holdsworth’s vision of the Duke’s court is expansive, but claustrophobic: there is no place to hide, and no windows or exits. Rich textures are everywhere, in both sets and costumes, adding to the claustrophobic atmosphere.
There are plenty of art historical references: the Duke proudly unveils Titian’s Venus in act one, fittingly followed by his Rape of Europa in act two. There is the most fantastic tableau as the curtain first rises, based on Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of St Michael, which casts a long foreboding shadow over the performance.
It is disappointing that there aren’t more tableaux to punctuate the show. Lighting designer Fabiana Piccioli must be commended for his exacting recreation of chiaroscuro in real life. Although much of the plot relies on darkness to obscure identities, the audience sees everything through a haze of dry ice. This, combined with dance moves that may have needed another day of rehearsal, gives the impression in some moments of a low-budget music video.
The final act takes place in Spatafucile’s dilapidated house outside town by the river. Clever background projection shows a storm brewing: ominous clouds race past over the water. The offstage chorus provides the moaning wind and strobe light lightning. Then, suddenly, with a tremendous plod, the rain machine turns on as if the smoking in the previous act has finally set off the sprinklers. Luckily, before the final emotional apex, someone behind the scenes has remembered to turn it back off again.
As a returning production, Oliver Mear’s Rigoletto has proved itself a clear favourite. Maintaining the expectations of score and narrative, but highlighting and reinforcing the cutthroat core of violence and misanthropy that the story is all about.
Rigoletto
25 March–23 April 2026
Royal Opera House
Bow St,
Covent Garden
London,
WC2E 9DD
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