Description
Before the title *Rigoletto* was added to the score, Verdi had considered two other titles: *The King Amuses Himself* and *The Curse*. These discarded choices alone reveal the tragic essence of the work.
The plot takes place at the court of Mantua, where revelry turns to frenzy; the courtiers, torn between the intoxication of pleasure and the fear of becoming the Duke’s next target, are stirred up by Rigoletto, a cruel jester who orchestrates social executions. Rigoletto himself is torn in two. On one hand, he is the cynical jester who amuses himself at others’ expense; on the other, he is the loving yet oppressive father, confining his daughter Gilda within a stifling innocence. Thus, when the curse of the elderly Monterone—humiliated and stripped of his wealth by the Duke—comes to pass, it will strike the jester. By refusing to recognize himself in this mirror image of the wounded father, Rigoletto seals his fate and becomes the architect of his own misfortune.
Rigoletto tells the story of three dysfunctional loves that will all ultimately consume Gilda. There is the Duke’s “fickle love,” which empties words of their meaning; Rigoletto’s “overwhelming” love, which suffocates rather than protects; and finally, Gilda’s “self-sacrificing” love, fueled by fantasies and illusions. It is this sacrifice of the romantic heroine that we must reexamine in the light of our own era, questioning its excesses: what does it remedy, if not the failure of a world where love is conflated with possession and death?
A melodrama in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi (1851)
Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on *Le roi s’amuse* by Victor Hugo
Performed in Italian, with French surtitles - Editions Casa Ricordi
