Melodrama in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi
Rigoletto is not only a mocked outsider at the court of Mantua, but also a loving father. When his daughter Gilda falls in love with the Duke—an unrestrained Don Juan—Rigoletto does not even shy away from hiring a hitman to protect her. He has no idea what this will lead to...
Giuseppe Verdi immediately realized how well Victor Hugo's scandalous 1832 novel would work as a suspenseful opera thriller just twenty years later: "As I was reviewing various subjects, Le roi s'amuse struck me like a bolt of lightning, like a sudden revelation." He even considered it "worthy of a Shakespearean invention" and perhaps "the greatest drama of modern times." It is hardly surprising that the librettist largely stuck to the literary source material in his adaptation for the opera stage. No sooner had the curtain fallen at the Teatro la Fenice after the premiere in March 1851 than the gondoliers were whistling the melodies: in no time at all, Rigoletto – as part of Verdi's "Trilogia popolare" – conquered the stages of the world.
