Cheat sheet:
Rigoletto
Everything you need to know about the opera many consider Verdi's masterpiece.
This article was first published by Opera Australia.
The revolving dollhouse-style set of Rigoletto weighs 16.5 tonnes. The floor of the palace is made of stainless steel tiles (they weigh 1.5 tonnes!). Watch it all come together.
What happens in the story?
The Duke of Mantua lives only for pleasure of the female kind. No man’s wife or daughter is out of his reach, and while the Duke seduces their women, Rigoletto mocks their misfortune. The men of the court plot vengeance, hatching a plan to abduct a beautiful woman they believe Rigoletto has hidden away.
The woman is Rigoletto’s daughter, who despite his best efforts to keep her hidden, has already caught the eye of the lustful Duke. He pays a visit to seduce the beautiful Gilda. Before he can complete his mission, Gilda is kidnapped by the mob of men, who take her to the Duke’s palace for his amusement. The distraught Rigoletto vows to take vengeance.
But Gilda loves the Duke, in spite of everything, and is prepared to go to any lengths to save him from her father’s wrath.
Love and vengeance meet in the darkness as the opera draws to its dramatic, devastating conclusion.
Who was the composer?
Giuseppe Verdi had a gift for taking a character marginalised by society and putting them centre stage, whether it be a hunchbacked jester in Rigoletto, an Ethiopian princess in Aida or a courtesan in La Traviata.
He wrote big, beautiful melodies that demanded technical brilliance from his singers but are also undeniably catchy.
The composer was born in a small village in Parma to a poor family. He became a music teacher and conductor before finding success as an opera composer. By the time he died in 1901, his fame was such that 200,000 people lined the streets at his funeral to pay their tribute.
Where have I heard that before?
Everywhere. From advertising to movies, this has got to be the catchiest tune in opera.
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Leggo's Tomato Paste Advert
The Family Man
The Family Man
Hunchbacks of history
Shakepeare’s King Richard III had a hunchback and a withered arm—a boon for physical actors.
In a great surprise for historians, Richard III's skeleton was discovered in a car park in England in 2012, and scans reveal he actually suffered from scoliosis.
Probably the most famous, Hugo’s hunchbacked bell-ringer was for a long time thought to be a work of fiction.
Historian Adrian Glew discovered references to a hunchbacked stonemason who worked on restoring the Cathedral of Notre-Dame.
Notable film adaptations include the 1923 silent movie featuring Lon Chaney as Quasimodo and Patsy Ruth Miller as Esmeralda, and Walt Disney's animated version in 1996.
The hunchback at the centre of Verdi’s popular opera was a character that gripped the composer’s imagination, the instant he read Victor Hugo’s play, Le roi s’amuse (The King Amuses Himself). In the play, the hunchbacked jester is known as Triboulet.
Verdi wrote: “The subject is grand, immense, and there is a character that is one of the greatest creations that the theatre can boast of, in any country and in all history.”
Like Hugo’s jester, Verdi’s protagonist is sadistic and grotesque, a misanthrope to society who nevertheless overflows with love for his daughter.
Immortalised in the 1931 film Frankenstein, the hunchbacked lab assistant of the villain, Dr Frankenstein, was actually named Fritz.
But since that film, Igor’has become a stock character, the hunchbacked assistant of your garden-variety villain.
In the 1974 film Young Frankenstein Igor (Marty Feldman) is the hunchbacked assistant of Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (Gene Wilder), and the grandson of the original assistant of Frederick's grandfather, Victor Frankenstein.
In 2008 John Cusack voiced an animated movie called Igor, endearing hunchbacks to the hearts of children everywhere.
Riff Raff is the hunchbacked handyman in the musical science-fiction horror-comedy film, The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Based on the original 1973 musical stage production, the film became a cult phenomenom.
A little history
A prolific opera composer, Verdi was always on the lookout for a strong character to base his next work on, and when he read Victor Hugo’s play Le Roi s’Amuse, he was captivated. The story of a lascivious King and his hunchbacked jester was banned in France after just one performance, but it was in the jester Verdi saw “a creation worthy of Shakespeare”.
He knew it would be a battle to get through Austrian and Italian censors, so at the suggestion of one of the very censors he needed to satisfy, swapped the King for a Duke, the setting from France to Italy and toned down some of the action.
It went back and forth with the authorities for months before it opened, but when it did premiere at La Fenice in Venice in 1851, it was a triumph. The opera is now widely considered Verdi’s masterpiece.
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