Rigoletto is an opera in three acts [ a ] by Giuseppe Verdi. Despite serious initial problems with the Austrian censors who had control over northern Italian theatres at the time, the opera had a triumphant premiere at La Fenice in Venice on 11 March The work, Verdi's sixteenth in the genre, is widely considered to be the first of the operatic masterpieces of Verdi's middle-to-late career.
Its tragic story revolves around the licentious Duke of Mantua , his hunch-backed court jester Rigoletto, and Rigoletto's daughter Gilda. The opera's original title, La maledizione The Curse , refers to a curse placed on both the Duke and Rigoletto by the Count Monterone, whose daughter the Duke has seduced with Rigoletto's encouragement. The curse comes to fruition when Gilda falls in love with the Duke and sacrifices her life to save him from the assassin hired by her father. La Fenice of Venice commissioned Verdi in to compose a new opera.
usr@3707584@2021-10-13(|)4b1e26b8242c4a901bdfe34117c5a926.jpg "SEX AGENCY San Angelo")
He was prominent enough by this time to enjoy some freedom in choosing texts to set to music. That came in the form of Victor Hugo 's controversial five-act play Le roi s'amuse "The king amuses himself". Verdi later explained that "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.
The play had been banned in France following its premiere nearly twenty years earlier not to be staged again until ; [ 3 ] now it was to come before the Austrian Board of Censors as Austria at that time directly controlled much of Northern Italy. From the beginning, both composer and librettist knew this step would not be easy. As Verdi wrote in a letter to Piave: "Use four legs, run through the town and find me an influential person who can obtain the permission for making Le Roi s'amuse.
He was wrong, and rumours began to spread in early summer that the production would be forbidden. In August, Verdi and Piave retired to Busseto , Verdi's hometown, to prepare a defensive scheme as they continued work on the opera. Despite their best efforts, including frantic correspondence with La Fenice, the Austrian censor De Gorzkowski emphatically denied consent to the production of "La Maledizione" its working title in a December letter, calling the opera "a repugnant [example of] immorality and obscene triviality.
