“Egli è delitto, punizion son io”

“Egli è delitto, punizion son io”

(He is crime, and I am punishment)

A line taken from the original “Le roi s’amuse”, by Victor Hugo, and I simply love how it is a classic example of opera working on multiple planes of irony and significance. (Let alone that, in all likelihood, a certain Fyodor Dostoyevsky absorbed this quotation into his most famous novel, first published in 1866.

At the first night of the Bayerische Staatsoper’s Rigoletto on 07.03.2036, my own view is that Barbara Wysocka’s interpretation is anti-romantic, EVEN though she presents us with a palimpsest of quotes, a stream of consciousness expressed through wall graffiti in Gilda’s bedroom that are firmly embedded within the early 19th century. Gilda yearns for release and death (rather than perpetual captivity)..Napoleon Bonaparte perhaps? “Love is a burning forgetfulness of all other things” again Victor Hugo from “Les Miserables”, although it now feels more like Karl Marx than Revolutionary France if one sits down to think about it.

Wysocka audaciously set the final act in a BDSM pleasure-garden. Is it not inevitable that in a world inhabited by the cruel “cortigiani”of Mantua, that love, sex and intimacy are completely at odds with each other? A fetish is removed from the innately human desire for sensuality. This rather chilling touch, made me think of 20th century theatrical detachment along the lines of Bertold Brecht. Certainly, it’s a hot take on the real perpetrators of a crime not facing any consequences of their actions.

Commendable contributions from Bekhnod Davronov as the Duke, Ariun Ganbataar as Rigoletto, Elmina Hasan as Maddalena and Riccardo Fassi as Sparafucile.