CLASSICAL

Why Rigoletto is a landmark moment for opera

Opera North’s production has black singers in leading roles. Its director says it’s overdue

Dogmatic streak: Femi Elufowoju Jr
Dogmatic streak: Femi Elufowoju Jr
SAMANTHA TOOLSIE
The Sunday Times

Femi Elufowoju Jr has mixed feelings about being the first person of colour to oversee an opera production for one of the UK’s five leading companies. His staging of Verdi’s lurid melodrama Rigoletto for Opera North opened at Leeds’s Grand Theatre last night, with the cast led by two African-Americans, baritone Eric Greene and Jasmine Habersham, in the principal roles of Rigoletto and his daughter, Gilda. “Opera North has been fantastic, letting me cast a number of black British and American singers in principal roles, still rare in this country,” says the British-Nigerian director, 59. “But I’m not particularly proud that it has taken so long, to be frank.”

Greene and Habersham are joined by Zambian-born Themba Mvula as courtier Marullo and Brit Molly Barker