the story
During a sumptuous party in his palace, the Duke of Mantua praises inconstancy and the pleasures of the flesh, and admits to continuing with her attentions a young girl seen in the church a few months earlier. Enter the Count Monterone, mad with anger and shame, for the Duke has dishonored her daughter. The hunchback Rigoletto, the Duke's jester, comes to the defense of his master and ridicules Monterone. He immediately regrets his words when Monterone curses him: how dare he laugh at the pain of a wounded father? Rigoletto is hit in full heart by this curse because, as soon as he stays away from the cynicism and the deleterious atmosphere of the court, he becomes a another man, a loving father who only thinks of one thing: to protect Gilda, her darling daughter, from the cruel world around her.
What they say
It is accepted and acknowledged that it is with Rigoletto that Verdi fully expresses for the first time, a musical and dramatic conception of its own. of a dramaturgical point of view, his new discourse is nourished archetypes, real models of behavior. He is clear that the Duke, without faith or law, is an unfettered pleasure seeker. He is moreover so superficial that it has no name: it is The Duke. An anonymous and absolute Power. Same analysis for Rigoletto. Archetype of the castrating father. Both are linked, inevitably. These are, for various reasons, real marginals who claim their difference in brilliant tunes and form a real couple historically destined to disappear, not without having made the misfortune of others. Two men, two anonymous despots, will be right, without wanting it, to the one who loves openly: Gilda. Jean-Louis Grinda, director
what they think
It's a classic staging, but of good quality, signed by the master of the place, Jean-Louis Grinda. No iconoclastic proofreading here. The story is simply transposed at the end of the 19th century when the courtiers, who became bourgeois dressed in fracs, devote themselves to the beginning of the first act at a "fine party" in the Duke's grand salon, with force undressed girls. Remarkably stylized and refined, the superb sets by Rudy Sabounghi are a feast for the eyes. With sober decorations, sober staging. It's transparency situations, to the dramatic impact of the different scenes and the plausibility of the characters that Grinda seems to attach. Emmanuel Andrieu, Forumopera.com Jean-Louis Grinda's staging underlines all the richness characters at the heart of a story placed under the influence of curse. Culture-commune.fr
