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Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. But the court jester Rigoletto decides to take matters into his own hands. He pays a professional assassin, Sparafucile, to murder the Duke, after finding

out that the ruler of Mantua has seduced his beloved daughter Gilda. To say that this plot does not turn out well is an understatement. The dead body in a sack turns out to be not the Duke,

who is heard singing cheerfully in the background, but Gilda herself. Based on a French play by Victor Hugo, the proposed opera was abruptly banned by the Austrian censorship authorities,

who had control over northern Italian theatres at the time. Verdi considered Hugo’s play “one of the greatest subjects and perhaps the greatest drama of modern times … worthy of

Shakespeare”. But there were two principal problems. It portrayed a reigning monarch as a libertine, and showed the working out of a curse, which by the standards of the time was considered

immoral and obscene. Verdi however was determined to fight for a subject on which he had devoted so much time. Eventually a compromise was reached, in which the situations of Hugo’s play

were largely left intact, but the king became an independent duke, and the title was changed from La Maledizione (“The Curse”). After the huge success of its first performance (Venice, March

1851), Rigoletto has remained in the standard repertoire ever since. Modern productions vary, and although the first scene at the Duke’s court has occasionally been used as an excuse for

ribald licentiousness, English National Opera have a superb staging by the late Jonathan Miller, set in 1950s New York, now enjoying its 14th revival. They have also produced musicianship to

match. The American baritone Weston Hurt gave a sympathetic portrayal of the title character, a snarky jester feared by the Duke’s other courtiers, and his interactions with the British

soprano Robyn Allegra Parton as his beloved daughter were hugely expressive. Ms Parton, better known for her work on the Continent, sang beautifully in a captivating performance of a young

but overprotected woman. The fact that Rigoletto is terrified to let her leave the house makes her easy prey for a seducer like the Duke, strongly sung by Yongzhao Yu. Her guardian Giovanna

(Sarah-Jane Lewis) is in cahoots with the Duke in his disguise as a poor student with whom Gilda falls in love. When she admits to her passion, her father tries to deflect her, by showing

her beloved young man with Sparafucile’s sister Maddalena (Amy Holyland), but to no avail. ENO have put together a great team of singers in which Patrick Alexander Keefe was notable as the

senior courtier Marullo, and David Kempster portrayed Monterone, the father whose daughter is another of the Duke’s conquests. His curse on the Duke comes to nothing, but he has also cursed

Rigoletto, who made fun of his anguish. This is the curse that deeply affects him, and he sees it being tragically fulfilled after the assassin Sparafucile (darkly and powerfully sung by

up-and-coming young bass William Thomas) hands him the sack with the dead body, and he finds his daughter inside. This ENO production provides an ideal introduction to one of the most

important operas of the whole canon, written in Verdi’s middle period, and for anyone new to opera is a must-see. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to

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