Giuseppe Verdi: Rigoletto

When Giuseppe Verdi (1813 – 1901) was commissioned by the Teatro La Fenice in Venice in 1850 to compose a new opera, he asked Francesco Maria Piave, with whom he had already cooperated on Ernani, I due Foscari, Macbeth, Il Corsaro and Stiffelio operas to write a libretto. Fairly soon he picked out the play called Le Roi s’amuse (The King’s Fool) by Victor Hugo, although he was well aware of the risk inherent in this topic. The Hugo’s play was banned immediately after its first performance on 22 November 1832 in Théâtre Français in Paris – the censors believed that the depicted escapades of Francis I of France represented insulting references to the ruling King Louis-Philippe – and Hugo lost even a court dispute; the play was prohibited for altogether 50 years. In Italy Verdi and Piave did not do any better: the Venetian police censorship assumed that the theme was “disgustingly immoral“ and presented an “offense to the royal majesty“. In the end, a compromise was made: the king of France was substituted by an Italian Duke of Mantua, the original murder scene, a cave, was replaced by a hostelry, etc., but the essential, i.e. is the nature of characters and dramatic situations remained unchanged. La maledizione (The Curse), the original working title, was eventually changed by Verdi to Rigoletto, according to the character who had impressed him in the Hugo’s play: a hunchback, a cripple with derision on his lips and anxiety in his soul, who knows well enough that his service to the dissipated Duke is wrong, thus deeply apprehending the curse fallen on his head. The world premiere in Venice on 11 March 1851 was an absolute triumph and the Duke’s cynical song “La donne è mobile“ was sung the next day by people in the street.

On the stage of the Prague State Opera building Rigoletto has been presented ever since the beginning of the building’s existence. It was first heard in the then New German Theatre on 21 May 1888, in the following seasons it drew the attention of audience among other things also thanks to attractive foreign guest singers such as legendary Enrico Caruso (4 and 10 May 1904). In the course of the Smetana Theatre era there were four different productions of Rigoletto and the last production (14 January 1988) directed by Karel Jernek was later included in the repertoire of the newly independent Prague State Opera, on which it has remained until now. The new production will be staged by Oliver Dohnányi as music director, Lorenzo Mariani, the art director of Teatro Massimo in Palermo as stage director, the set and costumes shall be designed by William Orlandi who cooperates with many prominent opera houses (Naples, Geneva, Palermo, Milan, Frankfurt am Main, Glasgow, Antwerp, Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Zurich, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, etc.)

Premiere: Mar 10, 2011