Cecilia Stinton’s new staging of Rigoletto, opening the season at Opera Holland Park, is the third production I’ve seen in under a fortnight in which a talented female director grapples with a problematic canonic opera. Following Deborah Warner’s Wozzeck (ROH) and Mariame Clément’s Don Giovanni (Glyndebourne), Stinton’s Rigoletto situates the libidinous activities of the Duke of Mantua and his court in a Bullingdon-style establishment in the Jazz Age.
OHP’s stagings generally tack to the traditional, but Stinton’s (designed by Neil Irish, lit by Jake Wiltshire) is one of the most thought- and convention-provoking I’ve seen at the W8 address. The provocations begin with the opening offstage dance music, here an upbeat, recorded dance band rendition to accompany what looks like a mildly depraved summer ball. The sense of an “entitled elite” (to quote Paul Hastie’s surtitles) taking its pleasures is unmistakable.
