RIGOLETTO is Now Playing at Paris Opera

Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verde is now playing at the Paris Opera. Performances run through 12 June 2025 at Opéra Bastille.

“It’s a magnificent, grandiose subject, featuring one of the most extraordinary characters ever created in the theatre and in the world”. With these words, Verdi asked Francesco Maria Piave to write a libretto inspired by Victor Hugo’s Le roi s’amuse. A paradoxical character, Rigoletto is both a deformed buffoon, serving the Duke of Mantua in his seductive endeavours, and the embodiment of fatherly love for his daughter Gilda.

With its wealth of contrasts, the theme of the curse and its unforgettable arias, the opera, premiered at La Fenice in Venice in 1851, became the first of Verdi’s great popular successes alongside Il Trovatore and La Traviata. Claus Guth has conceived his staging as a long flashback in which Rigoletto, wracked with remorse, relives the death of his daughter, to which he unwittingly contributed.

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