A gripping story and great music have made Verdi's Rigoletto one of the best known of all operas. It returns to The Royal Opera in a dramatic production and with a high-octane international cast. In David McVicar's powerful and perceptive staging, the cruel and the beautiful collide in a corrupt society.

At its head is the womanizing and carefree young Duke of Mantua, sung by ever-popular Vittorio Grigolo, who provokes to revenge his deformed court jester Rigoletto, played by the world-renowned Verdi specialist Dimitri Platanias. With Ekaterina Siurina appearing as Gilda – a role for which she has been so acclaimed here – the fateful triangle of the drama is complete.

John Eliot Gardiner conducts a score much loved for such tuneful and famous numbers as the Duke's 'La donna è mobile', Gilda's beautiful and virtuosic 'Caro nome', and a wonderful quartet that winds the voices together just as the strands of the plot pointedly entangle. Verdi's vision brings out the full range of the character's emotions, from elation to despair. No wonder, then, that Rigoletto's combination of music and engrossing action continues to thrill each time it returns to the Covent Garden stage.

PLEASE NOTE: This production contains some nudity and scenes of a sexual nature.