There was a lot of hoo-ha yesterday over a poster. Juan Pablo di Pace, who acted in the Royal Opera’s 2001 production of Verdi’s Rigoletto complained to the Opera House that he no longer wishes to be featured in their promotional image of it. It’s a shame really because, despite the fact he hasn’t been part of the production for a while, he is pretty central to one of the most striking posters that I’ve ever seen for piece of theatre.

But this unexpected debate makes me chuckle for a couple of reasons. Firstly (and this is despite my second reason below) I think that the Opera House’s self-promotion can be a little hit-and-miss. An organisation that has given us some really striking images over the past couple of years (the Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk arm, or the World Stage series) also, at times, puts out some utterly self-absorbed dross (anyone remember Mario Testino and the embarrassingly over-made-up, champagne-quaffing ballet boys?). Indeed, when Rigoletto was first staged in 2001, for some reason they stuck up pictures of the singer playing the Duke, rather than the one playing the title role.

Secondly, as some of you may know, I used to work at the Opera House and I was involved in this production. The image shows the first scene the audience watches and that is followed by the entire set slowly revolving to show Rigoletto’s house. On the upper floor of the house are some lit candles but, because the first scene is nearly half an hour long these candles have to be lit as close to the scene change as possible and, as the assistant stage manager, it fell to me to light them. There was one slight problem though: The set is one giant, backlit, perspex wall and I could be seen, quite clearly, running onstage and up into Rigoletto’s house. The stage manager and I decided that the best time to do this would be the exact moment that poor Juan Pablo had his clothes ripped off by the cast, when hopefully all 2600 members of the audience might probably be looking at one particular member. Unfortunately, as it turned out this would also be the exact moment that Clive Barda took the photograph which became the iconic signature image of that production.

Look again, very closely, at the picture and you’ll see me, complete with my stage management headset.

It always used to make myself, and my colleagues, laugh when we’d put on this production and the marketing department would trot out this image, year after year. Eventually, I had to point out my undirected presence in the picture to both the artistic and marketing teams, neither of whom had ever clocked that I was even in it. So, although I can understand why Juan Pablo might be sick of the picture, it’s a shame I’m no longer going to appear in the Royal Opera’s Rigoletto.