Grand Theatre in Łódź: The Duke of Mantua invites you

...all ladies and women to another performance of Giuseppe Verdi's 'Rigoletto', so he could look at the audience and enchant them with his charm.

The national performance at the Łódź opera house showed that a well-conducted musical layer gives the proper character to the whole performance, as it serves as a cushion for the events taking place in it. A momentary listening to its lyrical courtly sound, a moment of contemplation, and the scene of a grieving father with his daughter at the mother's grave turned into a joyful ball in the prince's chambers for me.

The simple functional set design and a team of professionals on stage in very colorful, well-thought-out and executed costumes is a recipe for focusing attention on the unfolding action and, in my opinion, understanding its significance.
The transparency of the direction triggered the activation of imagination, imagining what is happening offstage as well as on stage. Gilda's exit from the room lying behind the ballroom, as well as her father holding the ladder facing the audience, the garden full of roses behind his house, as well as the house of the ruthless siblings were great Italian ideas.
The naturalness of the characters' behavior is an undeniable asset of this direction. We could see artists revealing hidden life experiences under the cloak of malicious irony, possessiveness, and addiction to suspicions of the wounded father, delicacy, innocence, and dedication of the daughter with a simultaneous firmness in following the voice of the heart, seductive intrigues, taking honor into account reminiscent of the scene with the Commander from Don Giovanni, seducing not only the prince but also the audience, seductive self-interest, awareness of their charms, joyful cunning, innocent greed, and many others.

When after the end of the performance the audience applauded the orchestra and the artists of the choir stood on stage along with these artists: Zenon Kowalski, Aleksandra Borkiewicz, Dawid Kwieciński, Rafał Pikała, Grzegorz Szostak, Bernadetta Grabias, Olga Maroszek, Marcin Ciechowicz, Andrzej Kostrzewski, Łukasz Motkowicz, Joanna Śmiałkowska, Aldona Orzeł-Sztabińska, Romuald Kisielewski and conductor Bassem Akiki, these were the best, in my opinion, bows of the artists.

Iwona Karpińska
Wrocław