Verdi: Rigoletto / Callas, Gobbi, Serafin

Maria Callas, Tito Gobbi, Giuseppe di Stefano / Coro e Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala, Tullio Serafin

Rigoletto, given its premiere in 1851, is Verdi’s first generally acknowledged masterpiece. Based on Victor Hugo’s play Le roi s’amuse it brings a morally ambiguous protagonist – the eponymous hunchbacked jester – vividly and compassionately to life. It also features one of opera’s ‘greatest hits’ the swaggering tenor aria ‘La donna è mobile’, sung by the libertine Duke of Mantua – Rigoletto’s master and also seducer of his adored daughter Gilda, whose innocence and nascent passion is expressed in her delicate aria, ‘Caro nome’. Rigoletto’s most memorable solo moment comes when the Duke’s courtiers abduct Gilda and he castigates and then pleads with them in ‘Cortigiani, vil razza dannata’. Yet it is the famous Act III quartet that most graphically embodies the genius of the piece: each participant is strikingly characterised as, at an isolated inn, Rigoletto and Gilda watch the Duke seducing the sluttish Maddalena; she is the sister of Sparafucile, the assassin Rigoletto is about to hire to murder the Duke. His plan goes awry when Gilda – still utterly lovestruck – finds a way of taking the victim’s place. In a moment of supreme tragic irony, Rigoletto is alerted to this turn of events when he hears the Duke’s carefree reprise of ‘La donna è mobile’

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