Rigoletto

Opera in three acts
Music : Giuseppe Verdi

Libretto : Francesco Piave

(performed in Italian)
(12 characters, 38 musicians & 12 chorus singers)
Staged by Yuri Alexandrov
Premiere: 13 May 1997

Yuri Alexandrov's version destroys the operatic cliches, sometimes denoted as tradition, which have come to be associated with productions of Rigoletto, and brings the opera closer to the composer's original concept. The hunchbacked Rigoletto is morally flawed, his soul warped, and the hump and the mask are merely the character's buffoon-like external image. The motif of the mask, the inherently evil masquerade that is life, runs through the whole opera.