No matter how crude its description, no matter how crude it was originally intended, it is Rigoletto which opens today at the Teatro Real in co-production with ABAO Bilbao Opera And Teatro Maestransa in Seville. A performance with a director Miguel del Arco.

Opera Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) inspired by work The king is having fun from Victor Hugo (1802-1885)) who was persecuted and censored for showing the immoral king of France who abused his power. Verdi managed to bring it to the theaters Rigoletto with script Francesco Maria Piave (1810–1876) after negotiations with the censors of the time, changing the king to a duke and changing the names of Hugo’s characters.

The result was one of the composer’s most famous works and one of the most performed arias in history: Donna is mobile. Rigoletto reaches Real with the poignancy of a story about the abuse of power in a text in which women become victims of the whims of powerful men. The story of dominance that Miguel del Arco wanted to highlight with this montage.

Del Arco’s work drew attention to what he called “the bourgeois view of theater, which decontextualized the wonderful part of music, separating it from dramaturgy.”

Humming’Mobile lady‘ and other top 40 tunes taken out of context, it turned out that we don’t understand what we’re talking about Rigolettor

Joanne Matabosh, Artistic Director of REAL Theater

According to Del Arco, in Rigoletto music and drama are “perfectly united” and therefore preserved Donna is mobile In a story about the Duke’s abuse of power over Rigoletto’s daughter, it needs to give a modern take on opera without forcing anything. “It’s just challenging the 21st century citizen with the things that are in the script, and that’s why the story is framed as universal,” he says.

“Let no one seek a production that forces the work to explain everything they want. This is not true, explains the work, explains Rigoletto Verdi, what happens is that, humming Mobile lady and other top 40 melodies taken out of context turned out so that we don’t understand what they’re talking about Rigoletto“, defends the artistic director of the Teatro Real, Joan Matabos.

Rigoletto is a hard work in which the abuse of power at all levels is destructive, and Del Arco pays attention to how everyone makes decisions in every sphere of power. In his modern reading, Gilda’s authoritarian father, who holds her captive as a precious virgin treasure, is nothing more than an example of fragility of character who does not know how to love his daughter, although the center of his interests falls to the lot of the young woman who was kidnapped by the group men to bring her to the pleasure of the Duke.

“It was important for me to restore the vision of Gilda, a woman who I always saw as childish and banal, but if we pay attention to what she says, this is a woman in search of her identity,” says Del Arco. . “Gilda doesn’t need a feminist reading because she is a feminist, she affirms feminism as equality and as a new way of seeing the world, she is the only one who transforms, not deforms. Her sacrifice of love, her awareness of deception, equates her to Antigone,” the director adds.

Everything in the scene is intended to demonstrate the violence against women, the crowd of men – an all-male chorus – who kidnaps Gilda and is helped by Rigoletto, the Duke’s jester, not knowing that this is his daughter… Del Arco presents dancers who emphasize the absence of women in Rigoletto.

Nicola Luisottimusical director, especially noted the stage work of Miguel del Arco: “We worked to understand for the first time what it means, and it’s ‘enough is enough.’ This is important because all the people in Power still have on their side “women to enjoy” that they take advantage of and we have to do something with the show to show that we can change the present,” he assured .