Depravity and deceit: a life disintegrating … The irony of this Welsh National Opera website headline for its new production of Rigoletto is that disintegration risks being the fate of WNO itself. On this opening night of the season, the orchestra and chorus – bedrock of the company – were in exceptionally strong form, honouring Verdi and sounding as if their lives depended on it, which, in fact they do, these being the jobs under threat for lack of funding. The vengeful curse placed by Count Monterone on the Duke of Mantua and his court jester Rigoletto must seem to mirror the double curse placed on the company by the respective Arts Councils of England and Wales.
Perhaps the necessity of maintaining a defiant stance in this situation goes some way to explain the air of manic intensity that felt to be the defining element of Adele Thomas’s direction: flailing arms and wild gesturing, exaggerated movements ostensibly heightening tension. Her overall approach was apparently prompted by anger at the Partygate shenanigans during the pandemic but, while the decadent orgy at the court of Mantua references Bullingdon, the Piers Gaveston society – a roast hog couldn’t be more specific – and Bunga Bunga parties, the general debauchery and simulated sex was more frantic than shocking. Over the three acts, cynicism and calculated cruelty were the most potent elements, with Annemarie Woods’s starkly minimal set and curious array of costumes – female courtiers in 19th-century crinolines, men in vaguely 16th-century garb, wigs, ruffs and baggy shorts, black Darth Vader-like outfits for the kidnappers – mixing historical periods to suggest that society’s moral failings are a constant throughout time.
