★★★★☆
Opera is an art form that lends itself disturbingly well to our Me Too-conscious times: don’t most operas centre on a woman who falls victim to the desires of powerful men around her?
Matthew Richardson’s 2011 production of Rigoletto pre-dates the Weinstein revelations, but the resonances in this revival are strong. Verdi’s first masterpiece is set in the court of the lascivious Duke of Mantua, for whom women are mere objects of conquest; something underlined in this production by having the women in the court played by plastic mannequins. Manipulated by the men around them, they are denied even the most basic voice.
It’s a powerful symbol and shrewdly thrifty for cash-strapped Scottish Opera; shop dummies are cheaper to employ than flesh-and-blood women, after