Opera Essentials: Rigoletto

What is the story of Rigoletto?   

What is the most famous tune from Rigoletto?  

Who composed Rigoletto?   

Where is Rigoletto set?  

Why was Rigoletto banned?  

ACT I 

SCENE 1 

The Duke of Mantua is hosting a party. He has seen a young woman in church and tells his associate Borsa that he intends to seduce her. Count Ceprano is at the party with his wife Countess Ceprano. The Duke turns his attention to her in front of her jealous husband. Rigoletto mocks the Count. Another associate of the Duke, Marullo, announces that Rigoletto is keeping a mistress. The Duke and Rigoletto discuss how to deal with Ceprano. Should he be banished or beheaded? Ceprano, Marullo, Borsa and the other guests want to take revenge on Rigoletto. 

The nobleman Monterone arrives at the palace. He is angry because the Duke seduced and abandoned his daughter. Rigoletto taunts him mercilessly, and the Duke orders Monterone’s arrest. Monterone curses them both. 

SCENE 2 

Rigoletto is on his way home, disturbed by Monterone’s curse. He meets Sparafucile, an assassin. Sparafucile has been watching the house and knows that Rigoletto keeps a woman there. Sparafucile surmises that Rigoletto must have a love rival, and so offers his services. Rigoletto sends him away. Full of self-hatred, Rigoletto ponders his similarities to Sparafucile. 

It is not Rigoletto’s mistress but his daughter, Gilda, who lives in the house. She greets him warmly but Rigoletto will answer none of her questions about her dead mother, or even tell her his own name. When she begs to go out into the city, he forbids her. He orders Giovanna, his servant, to watch over his daughter. They are overheard by the Duke, who is hiding in the shadows. 

When Rigoletto leaves, Gilda feels guilty: she has not told her father about the man she saw in church (who is actually the Duke in disguise). The Duke pays Giovanna to leave him alone with Gilda. He declares his love for her and she reciprocates. He tells her he is only a poor student. Giovanna hears footsteps outside. She thinks it is Rigoletto coming home, and warns the Duke – he leaves and Gilda reflects on their meeting. 

The footsteps belong to Marullo, Borsa, Ceprano and the other courtiers. They have come to capture the girl they believe to be Rigoletto’s mistress. 

Rigoletto appears. Marullo tells the others to be quiet. He tells Rigoletto they have come to kidnap Countess Ceprano from the palace across the street. They trick him into wearing a blindfold and holding a ladder. They break into Rigoletto’s house and capture Gilda. Realizing he has been tricked, Rigoletto discovers the empty house. In anguish, he remembers Monterone’s curse. 

INTERVAL  

ACT II 

The Duke returned to see Gilda but the house was empty. Now back in his palace, he curses whoever has robbed him of his prize. His courtiers rush in to tell him about their exploits of the previous night. The Duke guesses that Rigoletto’s ‘mistress’ and daughter are the same person. He goes to find Gilda. 

Rigoletto arrives, searching for Gilda and soon realises that the Duke is already with his daughter. Rigoletto reveals that Gilda is his daughter. He attacks the courtiers in his efforts to reach her. When they stop him, he pleads with them to have pity on him. Gilda appears and tells him everything that has happened between her and the man she now knows is the Duke. 

Monterone is sent to prison. He despairs that his curse on the Duke failed. Rigoletto swears he will have revenge on the Duke. 

ACT III 

A month has passed, and Rigoletto has planned his revenge: he has hired Sparafucile to murder the Duke. He waits with Gilda outside Sparafucile’s home. Sparafucile’s sister, Maddalena, has lured the Duke there for the night. The Duke enters, again disguised (this time as a soldier), and asks Sparafucile for wine and for Maddalena. 

Rigoletto forces Gilda to witness the Duke seducing Maddalena. Gilda is heartbroken. Rigoletto tells her to go home and, dressed in boy’s clothes, to flee to Verona where he will join her the next day. 

Sparafucile, unaware of the Duke’s identity, asks the name of his victim. ‘He is Crime’, answers Rigoletto, ‘I am Punishment’. 

Sparafucile shows the Duke to an upper room to wait for Maddalena. The Duke drifts off to sleep. A storm gathers. Maddalena has fallen for the Duke, and tries to persuade her brother to let him live. He refuses. 

Gilda listens outside. Maddalena proposes a plan to kill Rigoletto when he returns with the money, and so spare the Duke’s life. Sparafucile at last agrees to kill any traveller who comes to their door by midnight and present their body to Rigoletto instead. 

Torn between her father and the man she loves, Gilda chooses to die herself, and knocks on the door. Sparafucile stabs Gilda. At midnight, Rigoletto returns to claim his prize. Sparafucile drags out a heavy sack and urges him to throw it into the river. Rigoletto gloats over the body and begins to pull it towards the river when he hears the Duke singing in the distance. He opens the sack to discover the dying Gilda, who begs him to forgive her. She dies, and Rigoletto recalls the curse of Monterone for the final time.

Verdi was born in 1813 in a small village called Le Roncole, near Busseto in Northern Italy. His musical talents were evident early on: by the age of 8, he had been appointed as the official paid organist in his local church. He began composing soon after, and became the leader of the Philharmonic by his mid-teens. He was rejected from the Conservatory in Milan, but remained in the city, where he took private music lessons and attended many operas at the Teatro alla Scala. His first opera, Oberto, dates from 1834. He was deeply affected by personal tragedy, and many of his operas depict affecting tales of loss. His younger sister, Giuseppa, died in 1833, aged 17, and his first wife, Margherita Barezzi, lost two children in infancy (in 1838 and 1839), before she, too, died, aged 26 in 1840.  

In Verdi was commissioned to write a new opera by the Teatro La Fenice, Venice, in 1850. By that time, he was at the height of his powers, with no fewer than 15 operas to his name. To date, his most notable successes had included Nabucco (1842), I Lombardi alla prima crociata (1843), Ernani (1844) and Macbeth (1847). He returned to Italy following a brief sojourn in Paris in 1849 – and was soon commissioned by Teatro La Fenice (the Venice opera house) to compose a new opera. Verdi began work on his 16th opera, Rigoletto in 1850, choosing to adapt the controversial play Le Roi s’amuse by Victor Hugo.   

The play describes the amorous intrigues of François I of France, and the thwarted attempt by his jester, Triboulet, to destroy him. The premiere of  Le Roi s’amuse  caused such a scandal that the play was withdrawn from the Parisian stage for 50 years. Although Verdi toned down Hugo’s plot, his opera was still deemed scandalous by the Italian censors and work on the production was banned by Austrian censors in December 1850.  

Francesco Maria Piave, his regular collaborator, was Verdi’s librettist. Piave set to work adapting the work as Verdi negotiated with the Austrian censors on each point of contention. The unfavourable depiction of King François I was avoided by renaming him the Duke of Mantua, after an extinct Dukedom. The name of the jester was changed from Triboulet (the real name of the jester in the court of King François) to Rigoletto. Some of the more scandalous scenes were omitted and finally, both the censors and Verdi were happy with the compromise.  

Felice Varesi, the baritone who had created the title role in Verdi’s  Macbeth, was chosen to create the title role of Rigoletto. Verdi fiercely guarded the score, insisting on keeping parts of it hidden as close to the opening of the opera as possible. Raffaele Mirate (who played the Duke) was even forbidden from singing or humming La donna è mobile outside of rehearsals.  

The opera had its premiere at La Fenice on 11 March 1851. Rigoletto became hugely popular, and it marked the beginning of Verdi’s ascent to the height of success, with two more masterpieces – Il trovatore and La traviata following Rigoletto in January 1853 and March 1853 respectively.   

Each of Verdi’s operas is characterised by its own, individual tinta (musical colour, or flavour). The music of Rigoletto, a tragic, heart-rending tale, is particularly dark and sombre, with the recurring motif of a sinister, diminished-chord curse, and a brooding storm scene. How ironic, then, that two of the opera’s most famous exports are a duo of arias, both characterised by their light and catchy tunes: ‘La donna è mobile’ and ‘Caro nome’. The characterisation of the three main characters is equally rich in variety. The Duke’s music is lyrical, based largely around arias and duets that alter in style depending on whom he is seducing, from the elegant ‘Questa o quella’ in Act I to the catchy ‘La donna è mobile’ in Act III. Rigoletto sings largely in duet, arioso and recitative, shifting from impassioned, doom-laden reflection to tender declarations of fatherly love. Meanwhile Gilda, Rigoletto's daughter, sings high-lying, delicate lines that poignantly depict her innocence and vulnerability. 

La donna è mobile  

‘La donna è mobile’ is an instantly recognisable classic. Sung by the Duke of Mantua, this catchy, carefree waltz belies the irony and cruelty of its sentiments. The Duke is a serial womaniser; an abuser of women who goes from conquest to conquest with impunity, leaving a trail of broken hearts and ruined lives in his wake. So when, in this aria, he sings of the fickleness of women, the double-standard is clear for all to hear. It is also clear to see: he sings it in Act III, while visiting the prostitute Margherita, despite having sworn his love for Gilda (and having made his views clear in ‘Questo o quella’ (‘This one or that one’), his Act I aria, in which he describes his ability to have any woman he pleases. The aria returns with chilling effect at the end of the opera when Rigoletto, believing he has successfully assassinated the Duke, hears the Duke singing it. It is then he begins to understand the horror of his mistake: the body is that of his daughter, Gilda. 

 Caro Nome  

Gilda is one of Verdi’s most heart-rending, innocent heroines, and he wrote the role for a lighter, higher voice than many of his soprano roles. So, when Gilda falls in love, she expresses her feelings not with the passion of Leonora (Il trovatore) or Violetta (La traviata), but in a gentle, dreamy aria that Verdi instructed to be sung at a moderate pace and sotto voce (very quietly).   

‘Caro nome’ is Gilda’s first extended expression of independent emotions, and the aria shows both her tenderness and her simplicity. The aria is preceded by a shimmering figuration described by Verdi scholar Julian Budden as an example of Verdi’s finest woodwind writing. Over it, Gilda slowly and rapturously pronounces the (false) name of her lover, ‘Gualtier Maldé’. ‘Caro nome’ then opens with a gentle flute melody, as simple as a folksong. The gentle pace, falling phrases and the stresses on words such as ‘desir’ (desire) and ‘sospir’ (sigh) suggest Gilda sighing with pleasure at her new emotions, while the solo violin conveys Gilda’s excitedly beating heart.  

The aria develops in a way that is both novel and very simple. After bar 24 there is essentially no new musical material. Instead, the aria becomes a series of continuous variations on the opening melody and text. The increasingly elaborate melody and passages of ecstatic coloratura suggest her growing excitement at the discovery of love.   

Towards the end, the slowing pace and tender, expansive phrases show her delight. Throughout, the orchestral textures remain delicate. The aria culminates in a rapturous, wordless cadenza, and then blends seamlessly into the following scene, as Gilda continues to repeat rapturously the name of her lover as courtiers approach.   

‘Caro nome’ is a breathtaking portrayal of young love in all its innocence and idealism. It marks the first step in Gilda’s transformation from ingénue to self-sacrificing heroine. The Gilda we encounter in Act II, with her long solo ‘Tutte le feste al tempio’, is a very different woman, both in terms of her emotions and her music. The fact that in ‘Caro nome’ we already know her love for the Duke is doomed makes its tenderness and sincerity all the more poignant.   

The opera was hugely successful in Verdi’s day, from an initial run of 13 performances, to premieres in all the major Italian opera houses by 1852, and a series of international premieres (including in Covent Garden, London in 1853) soon thereafter. It has never left the repertory since, and remains one of the most-performed operas worldwide.  

‘La donna è mobile’ has been used in many commercials, video games including Grand Theft Auto III, films and TV series (including The Sopranos), as well as gaining fame as a football chant.