be:“ I have in mind a subject that would be one of the greatest creations of the modern theatre if only the police would allow it [ emphasis added ].” Verdi surely knew that in 1832, the literary source for his proposed opera, Victor Hugo’ s Le roi s’ amuse [“ The King Amuses Himself”], had been shut down by the Parisian censors after a single performance. A play that centered on a vengeful hunchback and a promiscuous king was not tolerable in France, then marked by political turmoil. But Italy in 1851 was even more tumultuous, a country divided into city-states, and oppressed by foreign powers; the Risorgimento, a struggle for unification, had already begun. Efforts to suppress that resistance to power included censorship of the arts.
“... I claim my freedom of action, because all men have a right to it, and because my nature rebels against mere conformity.”-GIUSEPPE VERDI
It wasn’ t easy to move unorthodox topics past the censors, who exercised authority over all sectors of the Italian political and cultural landscape. According to David Kimball, the censors’ concerns were threefold:“ political offense, religious offense, and moral offense.” In the words of the Milanese prefect of police,“ Theatres are designed to correct morals, and must therefore never present anything but moral themes, or, if they present vice and wickedness, it must be done in such a way that virtue appears the more glorious and beautiful as a result.” Given those conditions, it’ s surprising, even shocking, that Verdi was shocked, so much so— in his own words— that“[ he ] almost went out of [ his ] mind,” when an early version of Rigoletto, called La maledizione(“ The Curse”), was rejected outright. As related directly to Verdi by Carlo Marzari, an administrator at La Fenice, the Austrian powers“ deplored … the repulsive immorality and obscene triviality” of the libretto and banned the performances of the opera. The opera went through another title change to Il duca di Vendome, and, with a few more tweaks, Rigoletto. An object lesson in Piave’ s efforts to satisfy the censors is the change in wording of the Duke’ s request to Sparafucile in Act III of Rigoletto from Victor Hugo’ s brazen phraseology,“ I want a room and your sister,” to the far less titillating“ I want a room and some wine.”
The musical and dramatic core of Rigoletto is Monterone’ s curse, leveled at the jester Rigoletto, who mocked the violation of Monterone’ s daughter by the Duke. In fact, the first musical gesture of the opera is the“ curse” motive, heard at the beginning of Verdi’ s brief prelude: an unusually soft and somber fanfare dominated by dotted rhythms, articulated by trumpets and trombones in C minor and landing on a dissonance expanded by bassoons, French horns, cimbasso( cross between a bass trombone and tuba), and timpani: short-long, short-long, short-clash. The curse is one of three sound worlds that dominate the opera, including that of the Duke and his court, and love of many stripes: Rigoletto’ s true love for his daughter Gilda, the feigned love( true lust) of the Duke for Gilda, and Gilda’ s teenage infatuation for the Duke, iconically expressed in“ Caro nome.” = The Duke inhabits a world of dances and popular music. As the curtain rises on a party, an offstage band plays a rousing tune, and the Duke confesses to a friend that he really cannot distinguish one woman from the other; they are all the same to him. The counterpoint to that sentiment is the famous“ La donna è mobile”( Act III), in which the Duke accuses women of being fickle. Both pieces clearly identify him as a shallow and mercurial man who will follow his physical needs wherever they take him. He seduces Gilda with outwardly sincere expressions of love, but soon after goes on the prowl, lusting after Maddalena in her brother Sparafucile’ s seedy roadhouse. In the famous quartet, Gilda and Rigoletto, at the window, witness that seduction in horror. The conundrum of the opera is why Gilda, having seen the Duke’ s character on full display, would sacrifice herself for such a man. That is a question for the ages, but no more so than for her father, who“ tears out his hair over his daughter’ s body” and sings his last words to the curse motive,“ La maledizione!!”
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Helen M. Greenwald is the author of numerous scholarly articles on vocal music from the 18th to the 20th centuries, and has edited or collaborated on the critical editions of Rossini’ s Zelmira( Fondazione Rossini, 2005), Mascagni’ s Cavalleria rusticana( Baerenreiter, forthcoming), and Verdi’ s Attila( Ricordi / University of Chicago Press, 2013), which was premiered in 2010 by Ricardo Muti in his Metropolitan Opera debut. Other publications include the Oxford Handbook of Opera( Oxford University Press, 2014; paperback, 2022) and a monograph on Verdi’ s Rigoletto she is writing for Oxford University Press. She has written program essays for an international array of arts institutions, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, La Scala( Milan), The Royal Opera House( London), the Teatro Regio( Parma), The Bavarian State Opera( Munich), the Gran Teatre del Liceu( Barcelona), the Maggio Musicale( Florence), and the Metropolitan Opera( New York).
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