“Oh! Le roi s’amuse is the greatest theme and perhaps the greatest drama of modern times. A work worthy of Shakespeare!”

A few months before he wrote these words to Francesco Maria Piave, urging him to “turn Venice upside down and make sure Censors will authorize this theme” – no easy matter given that social morality was prompt to be shocked -, Verdi was working on an adaptation of King Lear.

And while probably absorbed in Shakespeare’s play, his revered master, he discovered Victor Hugo’s drama and felt “like an illumination, an inspiration”, finding in the French author’s words (to whom he owned the greatest triumph of his “years of misery” with Ernani) a counterpart to the triangle formed by the King, his daughter and the Jester.

Between the futile and indecent Duke and Gilda, victim of the ignorance in which she is kept, looms the Jester, a two faceted character, a hunched back Fool and a father obsessed with a curse.

Monstrous and heartbreaking, grotesque and sublime, the lead role reaches its climax in the aria “Cortigiani, vil razza dannata”, whose descent from wrath to pleading roots the capacity of the composer to bend a form inherited from Bel Canto to the stage realism.

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

The Paris Opera Orchestra and Chorus

With the participation of France Télévisions.
With the support of the Orange Foundation, patron of the Paris Opera's audiovisual broadcasts and with the assistance of the Centre National du Cinéma et de l'image animée.

Director: François Roussillon
© Opéra de Paris - François Roussillon et Associés - 2016

Picture: © Monika Rittershaus / OnP