Rigoletto
Coliseum, London WC2
3/5

JONATHAN MILLER’S production of Rigoletto premiered 35 years ago and has been revived 13 times since — a tribute to its status as an innovative reimagining of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera.

In a highly convincing dramatic shift, Miller relocates the action from the aristocratic circles of the licentious Duke of Mantua in 16th-century Italy to 1950s Mafia-controlled Little Italy in New York.

That decadent era has surprising parallels with Verdi’s opera, not least in the Manichean opposition of darkness and light characterised by the dissolute Duke/Mafia boss (Joshua Guerrero) and the hunchbacked wisecracking barman Rigoletto (Nicholas Pallesen) and his daughter Gilda (Sydney Mancasola).

Rigoletto has hidden his beautiful daughter away from the libidinous Duke. But he cannot protect her against the curse from an insulted Count Monterone (Nicholas Folwell), whose own daughter has been ruined by the duke — the latter kidnaps and seduces Gilda and so the curse unfolds.

Unfortunately Guerrero, an engaging tenor, never quite convinces as a philandering Duke who’s steeped in corruption. On the contrary, he is a benign presence without the ensnaring charm and sexiness which eventually wins Gilda’s heart.

Yet Mancasola’s Gilda is the perfect embodiment of youthful naivety. Her soaring coloratura, agile and precise, never falters as she manages to hold her own with an over-loud orchestra conducted by Richard Armstrong.

Pallesen’s Rigoletto does not fare so well — his lower notes are sometimes overwhelmed by the orchestra pit — but he cuts a shambling and poignant figure and sings with a depth of feeling and characterisation that is totally convincing.

His revenge on the Duke takes place in a bar evoking a Hopper painting, where the Duke is seducing Maddalena (Madeleine Shaw in feisty and thrilling form).

It is in this final act where we hear one of the greatest of all operatic quartets. Rigoletto has brought Gilda to watch her seducer with another woman and, as he pleads with her, the Duke sings a tender and flattering wooing melody to a laughing and mocking Maddalena.

Tragedy inevitably ensues — the opera’s original title was after all The Curse — as Gilda is fatally wounded in a case of mistaken identity.

Overall, this revival by Elaine Tyler-Hall seems inhibited in its homage to Miller, who was present on the first night.

With the dramatic action often seeming static, a conceptual updating is perhaps required to reinvigorate his original vision.

Runs until February 28, box office: eno.org

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