Rigoletto (Festival d'Aix-en-Provence)

«What a curse!» It is because court jesters know that life is tragic that they are able to take up this profession. As soon as he is cursed by his outraged father, Rigoletto understands that this malediction will soon or later wreak havoc, whereas his master, the carefree Duke of Mantova, remains totally oblivious to it. It is precisely by trying to avert catastrophe that Rigoletto provokes it. By overprotecting his beloved daughter Gilda from life’s turmoil, he ends up loosing her. Adapting Victor Hugo’s colourful melodrama, Giuseppe Verdi composed one of his greatest masterpieces. Rather than lingering complacently on dark and violent situations, the Italian composer has livened it up with unbridled parties, passionate love declarations and elated duets between father and daughter. Eagerly awaited, Robert Carsen returned to the Festival to stage an opera full of biting humour on which he had never worked before. He collaborated with conductor Gianandrea Noseda, one of the torchbearers of the great tradition of Italian maestri devoted to Verdi’s passionate music.