Micaele Sparacino General Director

Program notes, Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto

By Stephen Brown

Rigoletto, first heard in March 1851 at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, is the earliest of that remarkable trio of operas that marked the full flowering of Verdi's maturity.

Verdi himself called it "revolutionary" in a letter to his librettist, Piave. Its musical language is more adventurous than either of the other two masterpieces in what is sometimes called his "romantic trilogy," Il Trovatore and La Traviata.

In a famous letter to a gentleman named Borsi, who had been attempting to cajole Verdi into providing another aria for his prima donna wife, the composer remarked that he had "conceived Rigoletto almost without arias, without finales but only an unending string of duets." Indeed, it is the only one of Verdi's operas without a concerted finale, unless one counts the ending of the first scene, which is really only a brief coda, without independent parts for the principals. A female chorus is also absent.

It is not the harmonic and melodic materials in themselves that account for the work's startling originality, but the novel and surprising ways these materials are manipulated and juxtaposed. Take, for example, the opening. After the brief introduction, the first sounds heard are the cheerful strains of the banda playing the first of a series of deliberately banal and rather vulgar party tunes, almost as if Verdi is parodying the relatively primitive idiom of what he once called his "galley" years. With these tunes the master not only evokes the atmosphere of the frivolous and decadent court, but also provides a sonic structure for the opera's complex and sinister action.

It is possible to become immersed in the drama so quickly that one fails to notice, for example, that Verdi recycles a single eight-bar theme, unmodified, no fewer than seven times and that he superimposes several new counter-themes for the principals over another iteration of the banda music.

In the manner of Shakespeare, Verdi exploits the incongruity between increasingly ominous events and the cheerful banality of the party music, suggesting comparison with scenes such as those of the Grave Digger in Hamlet or the porter in Macbeth, in which episodes of low comedy jarringly interrupt scenes of high tension. Julian Budden, in his invaluable survey, The Operas of Verdi, suggests that Rigoletto may come as closest here to fulfilling his never-realized desire to write an opera based on King Lear, with the themes of the Fool and the tragically misguided father embodied in a single character.

The title role is certainly the most challenging part in the standard repertoire for a high dramatic baritone, the epitome of the voice type known as the "Verdi Baritone." Surely the role of Lear, if Verdi had ever written it, would have been given to this kind of voice. It was this character, known as Triboulet in the play by Victor Hugo that provided the source for the drama, which attracted Verdi to the subject.

Severe censorship by Austrian authorities after the revolutionary upheavals of 1848 caused Verdi major problems in getting his libretto approved for the stage. Given the obstacles, Verdi and Piave had remarkable success in preserving the essential elements of the story (Hugo's original play, Le Roi S'Amuse, was banned from the stage immediately after its premiere in 1832 and not performed again in Paris until 1882).

In light of Verdi's struggles with this and many other works, it seems he needed subjects that would get him into a fight. Any dramatic situation strong enough to stimulate his creative imagination was bound to provoke controversy.

In the case of Rigoletto, the main difficulties were resolved by moving the setting from the French court to the independent duchy of Mantua and by changing the names of the principals. This was certainly preferable to bowdlerizations the censors demanded initially, such as making the king/duke an irreproachable moral paragon. In the event, the Duke was probably modeled on Vincenzo Gonzaga, patron of Monteverdi and Titian in the early 17th century.

It is worth noting that the opera was originally to be called La Maledizione, and that Victor Hugo asserted, "the true subject of the drama is the curse of M. de Vallier." As Geoffrey and Ryan Edwards point out in The Verdi Baritone, the curse "functions more as the catalyst for the jester's subsequent self-discovery than for the subsequent events of the plot." It shatters Rigoletto's delusion that he can maintain a total separation between his public and private lives.

Together with a sufficiently novel and intense dramatic situation, Verdi always strove to achieve precisely the right unifying tinta, or color, for each work. The opening of the second scene of Act I, is a good example: With the first bar, Verdi instantly conjures up the setting, described in the libretto as "the end of a deserted street." The soft, mordant half-diminished seventh chord scored only for a pair of bassoons and low clarinets sustained over a furtive, spasmodic figure in the lower strings (minus violins), tells us instantly that we are not in a "safe" neighborhood.

Although most commentators deny that any unified overall tonal schemes are to be found in Verdi's works, a case might be made that D-flat is a tonal center for Rigoletto. The first scene closes in this key, as does the finale — the ethereal D-flat major of Gilda's dying phrases darkening to a despairing minor for the jester's final outcry. Several other memorable and important moments share this tonality: Rigoletto's declaration that his daughter is the whole universe for him ("Culto, famiglia, la patria …"); the cabaletta to the Duke/Gilda love duet ("Addio, addio …"); the closing section of Rigoletto's great aria, Cortigiani ("Miei signori, perdono…"); and the poignant piu lento section of Rigoletto's and Gilda's second-act duet, ("Piangi, fanciulla…").

It could certainly be argued that Verdi chose this key at those moments to exploit the singers' most effective vocal registers, but the preponderance of flat keys in this dark-hued opera is striking.

The character Rigoletto has only one extended solo passage that is not in a flat key: his pathetic "la ra's" in Act II, when (again, to quote the libretto), he enters, "affecting indifference." The other important and relatively rare instances of sharp keys are reserved for Gilda and the Duke: Gilda's fragmentary arioso "Signor ne principe," a virginal G major, "Caro Nome" (a shimmering E major), the chorus ("Duca, Duca") following the Duke's second act aria (the fatuously cheerful abduction narration in A major serving as the dominant to the brash D major of the Duke's cabaletta ("Possente amor"), and, most famously, the Dukes's canzone, "La donna e mobile," a rakish B major. Other than the brief E major introduction to the quartet, which echos "Caro nome" in tonality, melodic profile and instrumentation, that is all we hear from the sharp side of the spectrum. But these moments provide vital contrast and fleetingly brighten the dark canvas.

The title role, with its unprecedented emotional range, dominates, but the other principals are fascinating in their own right. The part of Gilda, which, due to the fame and popularity of her single aria, is often thought to be the property of light coloratura sopranos, is more complex and full-blooded than generally credited. (For his celebrated wartime concert performance of the last act, Arturo Toscanini chose for his Gilda none other than the formidable Zinka Milanov.)

"Un mostro son" is the Duke's jocular but not wildly inaccurate self-appraisal, but for a monster he has interesting facets. His easy charm and elegance are perfectly captured in Verdi's music. Some have regarded his third-act aria, "Parmi veder le lagrime," as unconvincing and out-of-character, but it is not incredible that an amoral seducer might have his moments of sincerity, even tenderness. Why else would a sensitive young woman like Gilda find herself so fatally drawn to him?

The Duke's jaunty canzone "la donna e mobile" is far and away the most famous moment in the score, as Verdi foresaw — he withheld the music from the tenor until two days before the opening to forestall premature exposure. Despite its popular reknown, this aria is actually an anomaly in the context of the work as a whole — a rude incongruity that stands out effectively in the darkness of the score.

Verdi's stratagem evidently worked. The premiere was a brilliant success and the work has never faded in popularity. (One wonders what that first audience might have thought if the piece had been presented minus "La donna" and one or two other hummable tunes.)

Rigoletto remains one of Verdi's very greatest achievements. Many years later, when he looked back on Otello and Falstaff, those amazing triumphs of his old age, he is said to have remarked, "I could write another Otello if I had to, but I could never write another Rigoletto."

The writer, Stephen Brown, conducted Opera Bel Canto's production of Rigoletto, November 2004.

Notes on Maddalena’s aria

By Micaele Sparacino

In August 1903 the conductor Felix Mottl sent a letter of inquiry to Verdi’s Milanese publisher, Ricordi. He writes in this letter: “I have been told that Maestro Verdi has composed for the last act of Rigoletto an arietta for the role of Maddalena. Is it true? And if so, how would it be possible to obtain the music of this piece?”

The words of this aria are well enough known as they appeared in the original French libretto with the notation “paroles Édouard Duprez,” and they are still in the current edition. They appear between Sparafucile's “Apprète mon épée. Il dort, et le temps fuit” (corresponding to the Italian text “La spada, s'ei dorme, va . . . portami giù”) and Gilda's return to the scene in male attire.

Indeed! Maddalena’s aria does exist. The music appears in the French edition of the vocal score published by Escudier in Paris sometime in late 1857 or early 1858. Ricordi publishes this aria only in a collection of Verdi’s songs in a version entitled “Il poveretto,” with an entirely different text.

As intended by Verdi, the aria is no senseless interpolation but develops Maddalena's character as she pleads with her assassin brother, Sparafucile, to spare the life of the young man “who interests me” and who at that moment sleeps “calmly, happily and without fear.”

Theatrically speaking, including the aria allows Gilda a more reasonable amount of time to go home, dress in male attire and return to the inn. Judging from the date of the Escudier edition, this aria was most likely introduced in the first French language performance in Brussels on November 22, 1858. The first French performance in Paris did not take place until December 1863.

Maddalena’s aria was first performed in modern times in this country by mezzo-soprano Susanne Marsee on April 24 and 28, 1977, in the production by Sarah Caldwell for the Opera Company of Boston. Maestro Julius Rudel, who worked from the original Escudier edition, conducted those performances. That production, however, was in Italian and William Weaver translated the French text of Maddalena's aria. I have made my own Italian translation for the Opera Bel Canto performances, which I feel is closer to the original text by Duprez.

The writer, Micaele Sparacino, is general director of Opera Bel Canto Washington.