Opera North's Rigoletto Review: Verdi's tragedy offered a progressive viewpoint
18 October 2026 | 14:00 | Leeds Grand Theatre (North England Tour)
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Verdi's Rigoletto is one of the most routinely performed operas in the UK, and in the ten most popular across the world. With these prestigious pieces of writing, we have to ask what makes them important today, and why we need another revival?
Presented by Opera North, this isn't the first time that audiences have been graced by Femi Elufowoju Jr. OBE's production of Rigoletto, which was last seen in 2022. It now returns to Leeds Grand Theatre ahead of a North England tour, with Blake Denson in the title role.
Typically set in 16th-century Italy (loosely inspired by Victor Hugo's censored play Le roi s'amuse), Elufowoju revises the story in a non-specific area of modern Britain. Under the corrupt and womanizing Duke of Mantua, Rigoletto is the court's cynical jester who is despised for his difference. He mocks the Duke's party guests, including Monterone, who places a curse on Rigoletto, by which he must protect his daughter Gilda from harm. At all costs.
Verdi has a tendency to place the spotlight on figures marginalised by society, where Rigoletto's difference is usually characterised by physical disability. However in this adaptation his impairment is psychological, where instead he is dictated by the paranoia of a Black man in a predominately white society. This reduces the story's melodrama to observe contemporary race structures, and how this social exclusion shapes Rigoletto's control over his daughter.
Monterone is played with immense gravitas and stature by Sir Willard White, another Black character who is dismissed and shares in Rigoletto's seclusion. Although with an ethnically diverse lead cast, we lose Rigoletto's distinct, singular difference that his fellow courtiers villainise in more traditional stagings.
Most Rigolettos tend to be dressed in a clown's makeup and extravagant costume. But tongith, he is an ordinary man that isn't much more a fool than the rest, which allows in the opportunity to connect with his suffering on a more humane level. And there is certainly nothing ordinary about Denson's morally conflicted performance, whose masterful phrasing and baritone's command anchors into a devastating final act.
Rae Smith's design maintains the regency of the 1500s through the Duke's palace, with a vast marriage ceremony painting upstage, and the guests costumed in expensive cut clothing. Modern anachronisms also feature, including a Just Eat delivery cyclist and a Sainsbury's bag for life. And at the end of Act I, Gilda is kidnapped by a group of courtiers in red jumpsuits and clown masks - reminiscent of Netflix's Money Heist.
Rigoletto's safehouse is visually radiant and lavishly absurd with a toucan on a swing, life-sized zebra and African symbols of peace than adorn the room, symbolic of the overbearing safety he wishes for his daughter. Alternating the role of Gilda, Raven McMillon holds such a sweetness and delicate tone. She is quieter in nature than Denson's vocal force, emphasizing her innocence and greatly complementing one another in their contrast.
Having read the synopsis beforehand, I had expected Leonardo Sánchez's Duke of Mantua to be more dislikeable! Verdi's musical range is most jaunty and catchy for the Duke, allowing Sánchez to really play into his innate charm. Especially in the famous canzone La donna è mobile, which flexes Piave's libretto with the irony that 'women are fickle', where his hedonistic attitudes arise.
The world of the opera exists inside a box set, with a walkway downstage that doubles up as a tight backstreet. The space is very flexible, with the perimeter of the cube being lined with an LED strip. Uneven flickers in Act III give the impression of approaching lighting, along with the Opera North chorus who layer this with an ethereal, almost ghostly harmony of voices that both theatricalise thunder and embody the story's impending tragedy. Conducted by Patrick Lange, the live orchestra is monumental. Even from the dark instrumental prelude, I'll tell you I had goosebumps through almost the entire show. Audiences are in very safe hands with Lange.
Intelligent in its modern cultural references and commentary on British systems of marginalisation, Opera North's Rigoletto makes a bold statement to creative ambition. Elufowoju's psychological re-assessment of our titular character may slightly detract from the ostracized court jester of Act I, until it unleashes a fiercely realistic and relatable father in later acts. A strong continuation of Opera North's 26-27 season, playing alongside their production of Eugene Onegin (which we reviewed here).
Running at Leeds Grand Theatre until 20th November, before touring to Newcastle, Salford and Nottingham: https://www.operanorth.co.uk/whats-on/rigoletto/
