Rigoletto, Aix-en-Provence Festival, review

Robert Carsen’s new production of Rigoletto – one of the highlights of this summer’s Festival d’Aix-en-Provence alongside a starry Elektra and the first modern staging of Cavalli’s Elena – is as slick as anything this elegant director has done. Not that the showmanship of the production, actually set in a circus, makes it superficial: it is one of the most dark and unsettling interpretations of Verdi’s masterpiece around.

Making his first appearance in a clown’s costume, the Rigoletto of George Gagnidze proves an uncommonly split personality. Deeply tender and moving in the scenes with his daughter Gilda, he is utterly heartless in his mistreatment of the blow-up doll with which he entertains the debauched “courtiers”. Vocally, the Georgian baritone is solid rather than special, but Carsen gets the best out of him as an expressive actor, and he carries the show on his hunched shoulders.

Possessed of a dark soprano that is even throughout her range, and boasting some secure coloratura, Irina Lungu is well cast as Gilda. She sings “Caro nome” from a swing high above the stage, with the lights of the circus tent – Radu Boruzescu’s single set – twinkling everywhere behind her. Of the principals, only the dry-voiced Duke of Arturo Chacón-Cruz is disappointing. Presumably, he exposes his bottom (as he sets off to rape Gilda) to disguise shortcomings at the top of his tenor.

The semi-nudity in the opening scene, with its swarms of acrobats and exotic dancers, threatens to turn the opera into “Wiggletto”. But Gianandrea Noseda, conducting the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), steers a taut path through this and captures the vitality of the music.

A strong presence in Aix for the whole of this month, the LSO is also appearing in concert and continuing its outreach work through a locally tailored version of the LSO Discovery programme, while players have again been coaching the resident Mediterranean Youth Orchestra. Though some of these connections are to be maintained, the LSO’s formal four-year residency comes to an end with this month’s operas, and alongside Rigoletto it plays in a lacklustre revival of Don Giovanni.

In his only Mozart staging to date, Dmitri Tcherniakov shows a worrying lack of instinct for the composer. It doesn’t take long for his spectacular-looking set to pall. His ponderous production style infects Rod Gilfry’s singing of the title role, permeates the LSO’s playing and even turns the normally zippy conductor Marc Minkowski into Klemperer on sleeping pills.

Aix-en-Provence Festival, to July 27, 0033 434 080217; festival-aix.com