The World's Most Famous Operas: "Rigoletto"

Music: Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901)
Arabic rendering: Samir Shikhani

An opera in four acts, adapted from Victor Hugo's play "The King Amuses Himself." It was first produced in Venice in 1851.

The Characters:
• The Duke of Mantua
• Rigoletto: the court jester
• Gilda: Rigoletto's daughter
• Sparafucile: a professional assassin
• Maddalena: his sister
• Borsa
• Count Monterone
• Count Ceprano
• Countess Ceprano
Members of the court council
• Giovanna: Gilda's governess
• Courtiers, men and women; servants

The Time: the sixteenth century.
The Place: the town of Mantua, in Italy.

Act One

The Scene: the ballroom in the Duke's palace.

The dancers, men and women, sway to the strains of the music in the spacious, sumptuous ballroom of the palace of the Duke, ruler of the province. The Duke leans toward one of his courtiers — Borsa — and speaks to him of the beauty of the women present in the song "Amid the Merry Throng," whereby all know him for a merry trifler, a deceiver and a swaggerer.

He joins the circle of the dance and dances with Countess Ceprano, flirting with her within the hearing and sight of her jealous husband the Count, who stands with folded hands, seething with rage. Rigoletto, the hunchbacked court jester, seizes the opportunity to mock the Count, the husband, with biting, cunning mockery, thinking thereby to please the Duke and win his favor. Nor was that the first time Rigoletto had behaved in such a fashion — which moves the men of the court to threaten him with revenge. But he laughs at them, believing himself safe under the protection of the powerful, far-reaching Duke.

The dancing begins anew, and suddenly there appears Count Monterone, a gray-haired, dignified nobleman, who accuses the Duke of misconduct toward his daughter and rebukes him; whereupon the jester steps forward to answer for his master with his usual mockery and derision. But Monterone is unlike the rest of his fellows: he turns to his adversary the Duke and calls down a curse upon him and upon his jester. The Duke, with steady nerves, orders the old Count arrested, but Rigoletto begs him to withdraw

his curse. The Count, however, repeats the curse with force and violence as he walks between his captors. Rigoletto trembles in terror and falls to the ground...

Act Two

The Scene: outside Rigoletto's house.

The stage is divided in two by the wall of Rigoletto's garden: on one side a street leading to the door of the house, and on the other side the garden itself, in which a stair leads up to the second story of the house.

Here is Rigoletto on his way home, the world gone black in his eyes, brooding on the curse the old man called down upon him. Sparafucile approaches him, wrapped in his long cloak — an innkeeper, and a fearsome professional assassin who hires out his services to whoever will pay the price. He offers him his services, and the court jester notes down his name, resolving to have recourse to him at need. As Sparafucile moves away, Rigoletto bursts into the song "We Are Two of a Kind, I and the Assassin," mocking the Duke, the men of the court, and the members of the retinue, and pointing to his own degraded state.

Yet there is one sacred thing in his life: his love for his daughter Gilda. As he enters the house she meets him beaming with joy, and one soon gathers from the tender song the two repeat together that the girl lives alone — her mother having died following her birth — with the governess Giovanna in that house. When the time draws near for Rigoletto to go back, he gives his instructions to the governess to let no one enter, whatever the reason. But she, unluckily, is weak of will.

In the midst of their talk the Duke of Mantua steals into the garden disguised in a student's dress and stands behind the hunchback. He remains hidden there, after bribing Giovanna, until Rigoletto leaves the place.

The Duke comes out of his hiding place, and the governess leaves him alone with the girl in the courtyard of the house. He tells her that he is a poor student who loves her, named Gualtier Maldè, and they exchange confidences in the sweetest of melodies,

and soon he wins her heart. He bids her farewell, promising to return; she murmurs his name in rapture and delight, then sings the tender song "O Dearest Name." And she quietly climbs the steps of the stair leading to the house.

As for the courtiers' plot against Rigoletto, its outlines have begun to take shape. The hour is dusk, and here a band of the conspirators steal softly and silently into the street outside the garden wall, intending to abduct the fair Gilda, having heard of her beauty and supposing her to be Rigoletto's sweetheart — thinking thereby to teach him an unforgettable lesson. Before they can stir, the jester returns; the conspirators deceive him, telling him that they mean to abduct Countess Ceprano, who lives in a palace adjoining his house. He agrees with a good grace to join them, and they put on his face a mask like those they wear, and soon they bandage his eyes and stand him against the wall to hold the ladder on which they will climb. Not the least doubt crosses his mind that the wall is anything but the wall of the Ceprano palace. Some of them slip into his house and come back with his daughter Gilda, her mouth gagged to keep her from screaming and calling for help, while he stands there seeing nothing... When the truth dawns upon him after they have gone, he tears the mask and the bandage from his eyes and cries: "My daughter, my daughter... that is the old man's curse." Then he falls in a swoon.

Act Three

The Scene: a hall in the Duke's palace.

It is the same night. The Duke returns to Rigoletto's house and finds it deserted, so he turns back to his palace, where he pours out his ardor and his infatuation with the girl in a sweet song that begins "Every tear that flows..." His courtiers come in and tell him how, with the help of Rigoletto... himself, they abducted his daughter Gilda and brought her to him; he hurries off to see her, then takes her to his chamber... Soon comes the jester — now an object of pity and compassion, after having formerly mocked the misfortunes of so many. He tries to hide his deadly grief and mortal anguish by playing the jester's part. In vain he asks them what has become of his daughter. From the remarks of a servant who comes asking where the Duke is, doubts assail him and suspicions gnaw at him. He rushes at the Duke's room, trying to force his way in, and they bar his way by force; and then they realize that the girl they abducted is his daughter, not his sweetheart. He turns upon them and pours out insults and curses upon them.

At last Gilda rushes into the hall and throws herself into her father's arms, confiding to him her heartbreaking story in bitter grief. He calms her fears and comforts her, saying that he will carry her to a place far from Mantua where she may begin a new life.

At that moment Count Monterone, who poured his curse upon the Duke and his jester, is led to the place of execution; and as he passes through the hall he says that his curse has gone for nothing, since the Duke is still happy. Rigoletto promises

to avenge him and himself. But Gilda, who loves the Duke, begs her father not to do it. Her entreaties, however, go with the winds. He is resolved upon revenge, and we see him repeating the vow as the curtain falls.

Act Four

The Scene: a tavern on the outskirts of the city. Here the assassin Sparafucile disposes of his victims. The stage is divided in two by a wall: to the right a street, to the left a tavern — so that the spectators see at one and the same time what goes on inside the tavern, and in the street.

Rigoletto has hired the assassin to dispatch the Duke, who has been lured to the tavern to flirt with Maddalena, Sparafucile's sister. Rigoletto and Gilda arrive, and he feels that the hour of vengeance is at hand. A storm threatens to break, and the night is pitch dark. Soon the Duke enters the tavern and calls for wine to be brought him, then bursts into the most famous song in the opera, "Woman Is Fickle."

Outside, the jester and the assassin meet in passing. Maddalena appears in the tavern, and the Duke sets about flirting with her, as he does with all women. At once is heard the song "Fair Daughter of Love," in which all four take part: the Duke sings his passion, Maddalena answers him with coquetry and playfulness, Rigoletto bids his daughter forget her lover, and Gilda sings her despair at this lover's falseness...

After Rigoletto has proved to his daughter that her lover is a fickle traitor, he orders her to go home, to put on men's clothes, and to flee on horseback to Verona, where he will join her afterward. She departs; then Sparafucile comes out to him, and the two set about settling the plan of revenge. He gives the assassin half the agreed price, saying that he will return at midnight to see the corpse and pay the remaining sum.

The darkness deepens, and the Duke tells Sparafucile of his wish to spend his night at the tavern, and withdraws to a room on the upper floor. But Maddalena, who has taken a fancy to the Duke, implores her brother not to make an end of him. The assassin, however, has pledged himself to kill him and has taken half the fee, and he cannot break his word. At last his sister persuades him to dispatch the first stranger who knocks at the tavern door and to substitute his corpse for the Duke's.

Meanwhile Gilda, who has disguised herself in a rider's dress, has returned to the square outside the tavern, and this bargain strikes her ear. She resolves to sacrifice herself for the sake of her faithless lover. The wild storm roars as the clock announces midnight. Gilda knocks at the tavern door, asking lodging for the night. The door opens; but scarcely has she crossed the threshold when she is struck with a thrust and falls to the ground.

And so Rigoletto returns, and the assassin delivers to him his daughter's body, tied fast in a sack, and he carries it off to throw it into the river. But he hears the Duke's voice in his room repeating his sweet song, "Woman Is Fickle!" His limbs shake with terror; he goes to the sack and opens it, and beholds his daughter breathing her last, breathing out with it her final farewell to the world in the song "In Heaven Above." And as she becomes a lifeless corpse, Rigoletto knows for certain that Count Monterone's curse has hit its mark in the end. He cries out once more, "Ah, the curse!" and throws himself upon Gilda's cold body, a prey to overwhelming grief...