Il Duca di Mantova PIOTR BECZALA Rigoletto LEO NUCCI Gilda ELENA MOSUC CHORUS AND ORCHESTRA OF THE ZURICH OPERA HOUSE Conducted by Nello Santi Directed by Gilbert Defl o Set Design by William Orlandi Lighting by Jürgen Hoffmann Rigoletto tells the story of the crippled court jester Rigoletto and his adored daughter Gilda, whom he desperately tries to protect from the advances of the pleasure-loving Duke of Mantua. While Gilda naïvely gives credence to the Duke’s amorous advances, he is concerned only with constantly changing erotic relationships, of which he boasts in his famous aria Questa o quella. Rigoletto fails. A terrible curse uttered against him by Count Monterone, whom he had once ridiculed before the entire court, comes true: at the end he holds his beloved daughter dead in his arms. “It has long been a truism that Nello Santi is an exceptionally gifted conductor of Verdi, but it is always a pleasure to observe to what extent he in is control of every second of a musical evening – with his charisma, his calm gestures, his eyes and his physical presence. The emotional energy of the evening is concentrated in Santi’s person; he stands for nothing less than incontestable aplomb, and for music-making that, thanks to his sense of timing and style, is above reproach. This is the way, and no other, that this Verdi opera must sound.” (Tages-Anzeiger Zürich)