Rigoletto: Bayerische Staatsoper

About the Event

Hear "the Maltese Tenor" Joseph Calleja in Verdi's opera.

Calleja takes the role the Duke of Mantova, the employer Rigoletto: the deformed entertainer in a world of men who consume women.

The jester pulls out all the stops in his sarcasm and yet believes that he will remain unharmed by his public actions if he merely separates them cleanly from his private happiness. But when his daughter, imprisoned in a remote location for her own protection, follows her own longing, she becomes the victim of his double existence. A lonely, pitiable clown? "An amoral petty bourgeois man", thinks Arpad Schilling, "who dreams of innocence. A husband mourning for his wife and filled with a thirst for revenge. A great actor to whom success is more important than his own daughter. The fool of a noble lord who has been cheated by his own happiness. Verdi can do what Shakespeare does: He can tell a story in such a way as to make us shudder."

In Italian with German surtitles

Conductor: Stefano Ranzani
Director: Árpád Schilling
Set and costume design: Márton Ágh
Lighting: Christian Kass
Chorusmaster: Stellario Fagone

Il Duca di Mantova: Joseph Calleja
Rigoletto: Franco Vassallo
Gilda: Ekaterina Siurina
Sparafucile + Monterone: Rafal Siwek
Maddalena + Giovanna: Nadia Krasteva
Marullo: Tim Kuypers
Il Conte di Ceprano: Christian Rieger
La Contessa di Ceprano: Mária Celeng
Usher: John Carpenter
Page of the Duchess: Anna Rajah