Opera North's short London season opened with a Rigoletto of rock-solid musical integrity, conducted by Martin André with supple energy and fire but free from excess melodrama. Alan Opie, as Verdi's hunchback jester, grows ever more affecting in this role he knows so well, his possessiveness towards his daughter Gilda repellent and credible.
In the Danish soprano Henriette Bonde-Hansen the production has a real find, her voice of bell-like purity but highly charged, her pained revulsion towards her father intelligently handled even if, in brown woolly cardigan, she does look as if she's stepped in from a Bloomsbury novel.
As the Duke, Rafael Rojas launched with zestful lyricism but alas tired early and showed strain in La donna èmobile. Rebecca de Pont Davies, Brindley Sherratt and Stephen Richardson were strong in supporting roles, the chorus well-drilled.
The same enthusiasm cannot be heaped on Charles Edwards's sludge-coloured staging, in which the Ducal palace is a seedy girly magazine HQ, Rigoletto's home a caravan. This is a grim enough tale without casting it in beige. With no brilliant ball scene for contrast, the plot's stark impact is dulled, leaving the glittering score to do all the work - which, with fine orchestral playing, it did.
Opera North: Rigoletto
Sadler's Wells
Rosebery Avenue, EC1R 4TN
