When Verdi was ten years old he was apprenticed to a grocer in Busseto, but he was a musical grocer, and the musical atmosphere, which was life to Verdi, surrounded him. He had a passion for leaving in the midst of his grocery business to sit at the spinet and hunt out new harmonious combinations: and when one of his new-made chords was lost he would fly into a terrible rage, although as a general rule he was a peaceable and kindly little chap. On one such occasion he became so enraged that he took a hammer to the instrument--an event coincident with a thrashing his father gave him.
There is no end of incident connected with this gentle and kindly soul, who, unlike so many of his fellow geniuses, reflected in his life the beauty of his art.
CHARACTERS OF THE OPERA, WITH THE ORIGINAL CAST AS PRESENTED AT THE FIRST PERFORMANCE
The Duke of Mantua Signori Mirate Rigoletto Varesi Sparafucile Ponz Count Monterone Damini Marullo Kunnerth Matteo Borsa Zuliani Count Ceprano Bellini Usher of the Court Rizzi Gilda Signore Teresa Brambilla Maddalena Casaloni Giovanna. Saini Countess Ceprano Morselli Page Modes Lovati
The story belongs to the sixteenth century, in the city of Mantua and its environs.
Composer: Giuseppe Verdi. Author: Francesco Maria Piave.
First sung in Venice, Gran Teatro la Fenice. March 11, 1851.
Dukes and duchesses, pages and courtiers, dancing and laughter: these things all happening to music and glowing lights, in the city of Mantua four hundred years ago!--that is "Rigoletto."
There lived, long ago, in Mantua, the Duke and his suite, and the only member of his household who dared do as he pleased was the Duke of Mantua's jester, Rigoletto. The more deformed a jester happened to be, the more he was valued in his profession, and Rigoletto was a very ugly little man, and as vindictive and wicked as he was ill-favoured in appearance. The only thing he truly loved was his daughter, Gilda. As for the Duke of Mantua, he loved for the time being almost any pretty woman who came his way.
On the night of a great ball at the Duke's palace he was thinking of his latest love, Gilda, the jester's daughter. The Duke usually confided his affairs to his servant Borsa, and the ball had no sooner begun than he began to speak with Borsa of his newest escapade. He declared that he had followed Gilda to the chapel where she went each day, and that he had made up his mind to speak with her the next time he saw her.
