Sunday, October 9, 2011

Rigoletto's Big Mouth

Rigoletto is a dark opera to say the least, and Rigoletto himself is a dark character. His job is to be a court jester for the Duke. He makes fun of people, but he ends up going too far which results in his demise. Although he is actually doomed from the start. He is a hunchback, and is at the mercy of the Duke. Rigoletto is conflicted between good and evil, as are a lot of Verdi baritone characters. When he makes fun of people, he tends to go too far. When he makes fun of Monterone he gets cursed. He mocks Monterone for complaining that the Duke fooled around with his daughter. If anyone should know better than making fun of that, it should be Rigoletto. I find the fact that he made fun of Monterone like that quite ironic. Whenever there is a curse on someone, they are done for. Here is the twist. Monterone initially curses the Duke and Rigoletto, but eventually the Duke is let off the hook. The curse on Rigoletto remains and does end up being fulfilled. It actually results in Rigoletto's daughter Gilda's death. This is very tragic because Rigoletto does have a good quality to him, and that is his love for Gilda. Unfortunately, that good quality does not prevent the curse from becoming a reality. Here is how the curse is fulfilled, and how Rigoletto loses big time. Gilda is literally all Rigoletto has left aside from his house. His wife died, and I assume he has no other family. Plus, he is very unpopular among the noble man. Rigoletto mocks various people in the court, and there is a rumor started by Marullo that Rigoletto has a mistress, so they can get back at him. That mistress is Gilda, because they do not know he has a daughter. The noblemen end up abducting Gilda to play a joke on Rigoletto. Rigoletto begs them to give her back, and he really puts some beg into it. He pleads for her sincerely. Here is the problem. The Duke gets a hold of Gilda too, and she falls for his bullshit. He does not know that Gilda is Rigoletto's daughter because he has been following her to church dressed as a student. Rigoletto is very private about his life in general. He hardly gives Gilda any information when she asks about his family history. Rigoletto is insanely overprotective of her too. So much so, that she does not tell him that she has been talking to Gualtier Malde (the Duke). She falls head over heals for the Duke, and when she finds out that he is to be murdered, she steps in and sacrifices herself for him. She does this despite the fact that he cheats on her with Maddalena, the assassin Sparafucile's sister. The Duke is such a good con-artist, that Gilda still feels compassion for him despite his dishonest behavior. It is not her fault that she is naive. She is just sixteen, and was practically imprisoned by her father's overprotective ways. In the end, the curse comes true, and Rigoletto is left completely alone. It is a sad ending to this opera in that the one innocent person Gilda is killed. Rigoletto's sharp tongue gets the best of him, and he ends up with his daughter in a sack mortally wounded. His love for her does not work as an escape from Monterone's curse because a sharp tongue is the ultimate weapon, and Rigoletto pays dearly for going too far with it. By the way "Rigoletto" is one of the greatest operas ever written. I highly recommend it to anyone. My father was playing a recording of it about 15 years a go, and it got me liking opera.

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