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La donna è mobile Qual piuma al vento; Muta d'accento, E di pensiero. (Fickle is woman fair, Like feather wafted; Changeable ever, Constant, ah, never.) |
It is the Duke. Furiously the hunchback tears open the sack. In it he beholds his daughter. Not yet quite dead, she is able to whisper, "Too much I loved him—now I die for him." There is a duet: Gilda, "Lassù in cielo" (From yonder sky); Rigoletto, "Non morir" (Ah, perish not).
"Maledizione!"—The music of Monterone's curse upon the ribald jester, now bending over the corpse of his own despoiled daughter, resounds on the orchestra. The fool has had his revenge.
For political reasons the performance of Victor Hugo's "Le Roi s'Amuse" was forbidden in France after the first representation. In Hugo's play the principal character is Triboulet, the jester of François I. The King, of course, also is a leading character; and there is a pen-portrait of Saint-Vallier. It was considered unsafe, after the revolutionary uprisings in Europe in 1848, to present on the stage so licentious a story involving a monarch. Therefore, to avoid political complications, and copyright ones possibly later, the Italian librettist laid the scene in Mantua. Triboulet became Rigoletto; François I. the Duke, and Saint-Vallier the Count Monterone. Early in its career the opera also was given under the title of "Viscardello."
IL TROVATORE
THE TROUBADOUR
Opera in four acts, by Verdi; words by Salvatore Cammarano, based on the Spanish drama of the same title by Antonio Garcia Gutierrez. Produced, Apollo Theatre, Rome, January 19, 1853. Paris, Théâtre des Italiens, December 23, 1854; Grand Opéra, in French as "Le Trouvère," January 12, 1857. London, Covent Garden, May 17, 1855; in English, as "The Gypsy's Vengeance," Drury Lane, March 24, 1856. America: New York, April 30, 1855, with Brignoli (Manrico), Steffanone (Leonora), Amodio (Count di Luna), and Vestvali (Azucena); Philadelphia, Walnut Street Theatre, January 14, 1856, and Academy of Music, February 25, 1857; New Orleans, April 13, 1857. Metropolitan Opera House, New York, in German, 1889; 1908, Caruso, Eames, and Homer. Frequently performed at the Academy of Music, New York, with Campanini (Manrico), Nilsson (Leonora), and Annie Louise Cary (Azucena); and Del Puente or Galassi as Count di Luna.
Characters
Followers of Count di Luna and of Manrico; messenger, gaoler, soldiers, nuns, gypsies.
Time—Fifteenth century.