AS UPDATINGS go, this is neither too visually distracting from Verdi’s medieval Italian setting nor, too ludicrous a concept to annoy the audience.

Rather, this James Macdonald transposition to a Kennedy-era Washington DC, where the president is the lothario and the courtiers and Rigoletto inhabit the “swamp”, to quote Donald Trump, is visually reasonably fun and interesting.

Designer Robert Innes Hopkins effectively creates the Capitol Building, the Oval Office, Rigoletto’s mesh fence enclosed backyard and the assassin Sparacuficle’s sleazy lair. Of course, some of this period setting makes little sense with the text but, hey, this is opera.

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What makes this revival of the 17-year-old production, revived by Caroline Chaney, rather special was the excellent singing from the cast with a glorious, beautiful and firmly sung Gilda from Marina Monzò. She is the best thing we have heard at WNO for quite a while. Her father in the title role, complete with a hunch and limp, is sung by Mark S Doss with as much pathos balanced with foreboding and then anger as you could desire.

Korean tenor David Junghoon Kim fitted well into the role of an American president (rather than a Renaissance prince) with highly enjoyable singing of the well-known Verdi arias, love duet with Gilda and the chilling final scene.

There were no weaknesses in this cast with Eddie Wade’s Monterone, whose curse so rattles Rigoletto, ending up in an asylum; James Platt a darkly sung matter-of-fact assassin Sparafucile and his sister Magdalena portrayed by Emma Carrington as a drugged up murderer’s accomplice but who bizarrely shares innocent Gilda’s weakness for the President/Duke.

Chorus and orchestra, under Alexander Joel, are on brilliant form.

At Wales Millennium Centre on October 4, 9, 12 then touring.

By Mike Smith