Printable page
Email a friendSexual shenannigans
TODAY, arias like La Donna e'Mobile, Ella mi fu Rapita and Possente Amor mi Chi are part of the standard operatic repertoire, but the opening of Verdi's Rigoletto in Venice in 1851 raised a storm equalled only by that which greeted the play on which it was based, Victor Hugo's Le Roi s'Amuse, when it had its premiere in the Comedie Francaise in Paris in 1832.
Today, when the monarchy can be satirised on stage and screen, it is hard to understand why Hugo's play was banned by the French censor and it was only by the skin of its teeth that what the Venetian censor called "this disgusting immorality and obscene triviality" wasn't banned also in Italy.
Verdi's original title for the opera was La Maledizione (The Curse), which suits it better than the name of its eponymous anti-hero.
For, contrary to what the censors felt, its subject is not the undignified sexual cavorting of the royals, so much as the tortured agony of the deformed butt of the court's ill-mannered jibes and the way a curse upon him works itself out like a Greek tragedy.
This new Opera North production has been chosen for the reopening of Leeds' magnificently refurbished Grand Theatre and the improved acoustics of the venue demonstrated the subtleties of the orchestral and vocal sound of this company to near perfection.
Though Henriette Bonde-Hansen's performance as the hunchback's daughter, Gilda, has been rightly praised, for me it was Alan Opie's performance of the title role which was the more impressive, despite suffering vocal problems on the opening night which led to some uncertain pitching in the first act.
Rafael Rojas as Il Duca, was also superb. He managed to make that old pot-boiler La Donna sound as fresh as when it first astounded the audiences in Venice over a century-and-a-half ago.
I was a little surprised that Opera North, whose productions are usually so inventive, did not attempt to point up the play's contemporary relevance. Perhaps the revival of Jonathan Miller's innovative gangster production earlier this year - in which Alan Opie also played the title role - might have played some part in this decision.
But even Miller's "Little Italy" setting is something of a period production. In Tony Harrison's 1996 translation of the Victor Hugo play, he moved the opera to Victorian London, featuring a lecherous Prince of Wales, which brought it closer to home.
But, surely, the sexual shenanigans of modern politics, both new Labour and Tory, or even the bedroom farce of Charles and Camilla and the ill-fated Diana, could have pointed up the political implications of the story.
Perhaps that needs a brand new opera.
Plays at the Grand, Leeds, on October 21 and 25, then tours. Box office: 0870 125 1898.
KARL DALLAS