Chicago Lyric Opera’s new production transfers the action “to a dark Victorian gaming room, a males-only citadel of stuffed armchairs and stuffed shirts. The inhabitants are even randier and slimier than the Duke of Mantua, the opera’s tenoral anti-hero. Almost all the women who are allowed into this bad ol’ boys club are whores, playthings or sexual hysterics. Poor Gilda, Rigoletto’s virtuous daughter, is doomed the moment she steps into this crypto-orgy pit.” – Chicago Tribune