ROH backs down over actor’s bit part

As an aspiring young actor, Juan Pablo Di Pace (pictured) was happy to play a small role in the Royal Opera House's 2001 production of Verdi's Rigoletto. But a small part was not what he had in mind when the ROH used his naked image from those performances to advertise later productions in which he did not appear - and airbrushed out his penis.

Di Pace, 28, who was cast in a crowd scene, complained that the image had been distorted unflatteringly in different posters. In a 2005 version of the poster the Argentinian-born actor's manhood was shrunk so much that it 'made it look like he barely had one at all'.

The ROH has now said it will stop using the poster and when Rigoletto is next performed in 2009, the actor will not feature in any image publicising the production. "The poster was a generic image of the production," said an opera spokesman Christopher Millard. "Juan Pablo has been in contact with us through one of his representatives and expressed his discontent and we have agreed that we will no longer be using this particular image."

Happily for Di Pace, he is now onto bigger and better parts in film and television. He has appeared in The Catherine Tate Show, the movie Three with Kelly Brook and he's in the forthcoming big screen adaptation of Mamma Mia! which co-stars Meryl Streep, Colin Firth and Pierce Brosnan.