![]() But events take a turn for the worse when the unscrupulous assassin, at the behest of his sister Maddalena, besotted with the Duke as much as Gilda is, agrees to spare Mantua’s life if another victim can be found to replace him. When Mantua sets about making Gilda his next sexual conquest, Rigoletto makes a bargain with Sparafucile to kill the Duke. Rigoletto, the court jester of the opera’s title, is an everyman we all can recognise: happy when at work to aid and abet his lothario master, the Duke of Mantua, in his philandering, but a jealously protective and loving parent at home to his daughter Gilda, desperate to protect her from the evils of the world. But none of the changes forced upon him watered down Rigoletto’s acerbic bite, creating musical theatre that still has the power to send a chill down our spines. With Roman Arndt as the Duke Extracts from the sitzprobe rehearsal of Opera Norths production of Verdis Rigoletto, featuring the Chorus and Orchestra of Opera North under Garry Walker. Verdi solved his problems by having the story set a couple of centuries before the events in Hugo’s drama. ![]() A tragic tale of misplaced love, the work that provided the basis for Rigoletto, Victor Hugo’s play of 1832, Le roi s’amuse, had been banned in its author's native France after just one performance. ![]() ![]() Premiered in Venice at the Teatro La Fenice on 11 March 1851, Rigoletto saw its composer, Giuseppe Verdi, as he did with so many of his operas, determinedly lock horns with the local censor.
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