|
''Rigoletto'' () is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play ''Le roi s'amuse'' by Victor Hugo. Despite serious initial problems with the Austrian censors who had control over northern Italian theatres at the time, the opera had a triumphant premiere at La Fenice in Venice on 11 March 1851. It is considered by many to be the first of the operatic masterpieces of Verdi's middle-to-late career. Its tragic story revolves around the licentious Duke of Mantua, his hunch-backed court jester Rigoletto and Rigoletto's beautiful daughter Gilda. The opera's original title, ''La maledizione'' (The Curse), refers to the curse placed on both the Duke and Rigoletto by a courtier whose daughter had been seduced by the Duke with Rigoletto's encouragement. The curse comes to fruition when Gilda likewise falls in love with the Duke and eventually sacrifices her life to save him from the assassins hired by her father. ==Composition history== Verdi was commissioned to write a new opera by the La Fenice opera house in Venice in 1850. By this time he was already a well-known composer and had a degree of freedom in choosing the works he would prefer to set to music. He then asked Francesco Maria Piave (with whom he had already created ''Ernani'', ''I due Foscari'', ''Macbeth'', ''Il Corsaro'' and ''Stiffelio'') to examine the play ''Kean'' by Alexandre Dumas, père, but he felt he needed a more energetic subject to work on.〔Phillips-Matz (1993) p. 265〕 Verdi soon stumbled upon Victor Hugo's five-act play ''Le roi s'amuse''. He later explained that "The subject is grand, immense, and there is a character that is one of the greatest creations that the theatre can boast of, in any country and in all history."〔Verdi to Piave, 28 April 1850, in Phillips-Matz, p. 265〕 It was a highly controversial subject, and Hugo himself had already had trouble with censorship in France, which had banned productions after its first performance nearly twenty years earlier (it would not be performed again until 1882). As Austria at that time directly controlled much of Northern Italy, it came before the Austrian Board of Censors. Hugo's play depicted a king (Francis I of France) as an immoral and cynical womanizer, something that was not accepted in Europe during the Restoration period.〔Hugo (1863) pp. 163–164〕 From the beginning, Verdi was aware of the risks, as was Piave. In a letter which Verdi wrote to Piave: "Use four legs, run through the town and find me an influential person who can obtain the permission for making ''Le Roi s'amuse''."〔 Correspondence between a prudent Piave and an already committed Verdi followed, but the two underestimated the power and the intentions of Austrians and remained at risk. Even the friendly Guglielmo Brenna, secretary of La Fenice, who had promised them that they would not have problems with the censors, was wrong. At the beginning of the summer of 1850, rumours started to spread that Austrian censorship was going to forbid the production. The censors considered the Hugo work to verge on ''lèse majesté'' and would never permit such a scandalous work to be performed in Venice. In August, Verdi and Piave prudently retired to Busseto, Verdi's hometown, to continue the composition and prepare a defensive scheme. They wrote to the theatre, assuring them that the censor's doubts about the morality of the work were not justified but since very little time was left, very little could be done. At the time, Piave and Verdi had titled the opera ''La maledizione'' (The Curse), and this unofficial title was used by Austrian censor De Gorzkowski in an emphatic letter written in December 1850 in which he definitively denied consent to its production, calling it "a repugnant (of ) immorality and obscene triviality."〔Phillips-Matz (1993) p. 270〕 In order not to waste all their work, Piave tried to revise the libretto and was even able to pull from it another opera, ''Il Duca di Vendome'', in which the sovereign was with a duke and both the hunchback and the curse disappeared. Verdi was completely against this proposed solution and preferred instead to have direct negotiations with censors, arguing over each and every point of the work.〔Phillips-Matz (1993) p. 272〕 At this point, Brenna, La Fenice's secretary, showed the Austrians some letters and articles depicting the bad character but the great value of the artist, helping to mediate the dispute. By January 1851 the parties were able to agree that the action of the opera would be moved from the royal court of France to a duchy of France or Italy, and some of the characters would have to be renamed. In the new version the Duke reigns over Mantua and belongs to the Gonzaga family. The House of Gonzaga had long been extinct by the mid-19th century, and the Dukedom of Mantua no longer existed, thus no one could be offended. The scene in which the sovereign retires to Gilda's bedroom would be deleted and the visit of the Duke to the ''Taverna'' (inn) was no longer intentional, but provoked by a trick. The hunchback jester (originally called Triboulet) was renamed Rigoletto from a parody of Hugo's play, ''Rigoletti, ou Le dernier des fous'' (Rigoletti, or The last of the fools).〔"Rigolo" is a French word meaning "funny"〕 By 14 January, the opera's definitive title had become ''Rigoletto''.〔Phillips-Matz (1993) p. 273〕 Verdi finally completed the composition of the opera on 5 February 1851, a little more than a month before the premiere, although as he worked on the final stages of Act 3, Piave had already arranged for the sets to be designed. The singers were given some of their music to learn on 7 February. However, Verdi kept at least a third of the score at Busseto. He brought it with him when he arrived in Venice for the rehearsals on 19 February and would continue to refine the orchestration during the rehearsal period.〔Phillips-Matz (1993) pp. 278, 281, 283〕 For the première, La Fenice had cast Felice Varesi as Rigoletto, the young tenor Raffaele Mirate as the Duke, and Teresa Brambilla as Gilda (although Verdi would have preferred Teresa De Giuli Borsi).〔Budden (1984) p. 482〕 Due to the high risk of unauthorised copying, Verdi had demanded the maximum secrecy from all his singers and musicians. Mirate had use of his score only a few evenings before the première and had to swear that he would not sing or even whistle the tune of "La donna è mobile" except during the rehearsals.〔Downes (1918) p. 38〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rigoletto」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|