Ilona KarasвЂ™ costumes grow more understated and elegant as the show progresses: a dour homburg and coat for Rigoletto a chaste-yet-sensuous white shift for Gilda the only dull note was the DukeвЂ™s jacket in Act three, which made him look a little short, rather impeding his priapic energies. In the first scene, the Renaissance-chic costumes give way to modern dress. Monterone suffers a spectacular, horrific eye-gouging and then is bathed in light and dry ice Marullo and Ceprano stage a queer-coded dumb show reenacting the abduction of Gilda in Act two (perhaps a long-range play on CaravaggioвЂ™s own sexually complex portraiture). Characters take on the grandiose and bizarre gestures of the very artworks he loves. The Duke bullies the costumed women lined up in the first scene. Fabiana PiccioliвЂ™s tenebrous lighting emphasizes the aesthetic beats, grasping the chiaroscuro of CaravaggioвЂ™s soiled world. Art shapes life ever so cruelly in this вЂњRigoletto:вЂќ to riff on Brillat-Savarin, you are what you rate вЂ“ monstrously so. (The climactic reveal of Act one sees her replaced by a grotesque wooden doll, like something out of Otto Dix or Sarah Lucas). The party takes place underneath TitianвЂ™s вЂњVenus of Urbino вЂќ it is replaced portentously in the second half by his вЂњRape of Europa,вЂќ lingering above the room where the Duke rapes Gilda. Matthew.вЂќ The Duke, it turns out, is in the picture, and wears a skull with golden horns the saint is substituted for MonteroneвЂ™s daughter, pregnant but clad in virginal white. The curtain rises, after VerdiвЂ™s backlit, baleful opening, on a dazzling mise-en-scene вЂ“ a real-life tableau of CaravaggioвЂ™s вЂњThe Martyrdom of St. Art is at the center of MearsвЂ™ vision of the opera.

The operaвЂ™s titular character shares something with the women used and thrown away by the Duke вЂ“ their disenfranchisement comes from how they please the eye. The real Duke of Mantua was a patron of the arts вЂ“ look out for him in one of the ROH boxes today вЂ“ and MearsвЂ™ production makes this the starting point.

Royal opera house