rigoletto i

8/10/2019 Rigoletto i

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Summary of Macbeth

• Uses Shakespeare ! still relatively new to Italy• Casts against operatic conventions of ‘beauty’

• Requires voices to make harsh, stied sounds

• Orchestra used more actively to narrate drama

• Coaches the singers both dramatically & musically • Dictates certain scenic e # ects $ eg., staging of Banquo’s

ghost %• Pushes against the boundaries of operatic form to create

longer, more complex scenes • Wanted $ but didn’t always get % more unusual setting of

words



Verdi’s soundscape

• Closeness of libretto to source material • Prioritising drama over music $ to the extent of breaking

conventions of musical form and genre % • Choice of dark, tempestuous narratives based on strong

conicts between individual and state, father and child,social or family vendettas

• Choice of unusual characters, often with inner conicts

• Brevity and compression of action • Emphasis on innovation



Verdi’s soundscape

• Unusual rhythmic patterns & accents $ ‘slancio’ % • Use of dynamic extremes• Loudness ! use of brass instruments & large orchestra • Angularity of vocal line ! wide leaps, irregular phrase

lengths • Emphasis on passion and the upper third of vocal range • Expansion of vocal expressivity ! ‘il grido’ • Use of chorus • Development of ‘new’ voices ! baritone & dramatic

mezzo&soprano



Verdi’s Middle Period



‘You know that the chord of grief ' ‘dolore’( is that whichfinds greater resonance in our hearts, but grief assumes adifferent character according to the times and according tothe temperament and the condition of a nation. The kind of grief that interests the souls of us Italians is that of a people who feel needful of a better destiny; it is the grief ofsomeone who has fallen and desires to raise himself up

again; it is the grief of someone who repents, and waits and wishes for his regeneration. My dear Verdi, accompany yournoble harmonies with this high and solemn grief, nurture it,strengthen it, lead it to its goal. Music is a languageunderstood by all, and there is no great effect that musiccannot produce. The ‘fantastic’ is something that candemonstrate genius; truth ' ‘il vero’( is something thatdemonstrates genius and soul.’

Letter from Giuseppe Giusti to Verdi, 19 March 1847



Verdi’s response

‘Yes, you are right: the chord of grief! ‘dolore’ " finds greater resonance in our hearts: you speak as the great man you

are, and I will certainly follow your suggestionsbecause I understand what you mean.’

Letter from Verdi to Giuseppe Giusti, 27 March 1847.



1848 uprising• early incidents at Palermo and Messina, then

Paris, Vienna and Venice • Milan ! ‘Cinque Giornate’, 18&22 March • Carlo Alberto, king of Sardinia and Piedmont,

declares war on Austria on 23 March • 29 April ! Pope Pius IX denounces war against

Austrians • 5 August ! Austrians re &enter Milan • 9 February 1849: Roman Republic • 2 July 1849 ! French defeat of Roman Republic • 23 August 1849 ! Austrian defeat of besieged

Venice



‘Liberals then, like the liberals today, were divided into two parties:those who wanted to go forward slowly, and those who wanted to run. The first, believing that without the people no solid revolution couldbe achieved, were preparing the populace for liberty through themeans of instruction in religion and morals, by opening schools,publishing good books, founding banks, societies of mutual aid etc. And by discussing systems of education they were preparingthemselves to form systems of government. The second group, who wanted take a shorter path, were gathering at night in cellars to writeproclamations, to prepare pamphlets, to study ways of collectingmoney in order to fund the war. But both parties could not be said toamount to many: most people, numerically speaking, wereeither ignorant, indifferent or inimical to political things: thatis, either they knew nothing, or they did not want to knowanything.’

Giovanni Frassi, 1859



After the Uprising

In November 1849, Verdi wrote to Escudier: ‘Italy isnothing more than a large and beautiful prison! "…# Aparadise for the eyes: an inferno for the heart!’

Marcello Conati, Giuseppe Verdi: Guida a # a vita e a # e opere$ Pisa: ETS, 2003 %, 68.



‘domestic’ operas

• Luisa Mi ! er $ 1849 %

• Sti " elio$ 1850

%

• Rigoletto !1851"

• Il trovatore !1853"

• La traviata !1853"



The theme of love

Oberdorfer claims that Verdi’s early heroines & Elvira,

Alzira, Amalia & ‘do not know love: they speak of love,

" yet# they do not love’.

Aldo Oberdorfer, Giuseppe Verdi: Autobiograa da ! e lettere $ 1941; Rizzoli, 2001 %, 155!



VERDI, OPERA AND LOVE

In a letter to Ricordi on 9 March 1848, Verdi complained ofCammarano’s reluctance to set Cola di Rienzi because althoughthere were two ‘wonderful’ female roles, neither centred onlove:

‘My God! Is it possible that one can never ever move or wantto move away from treating subjects in the restricted, feeblestyle with which they have been dealt with until now? Whymake love always the mainstay of drama?’

Neither Nabucconor Macbeth had a romantic element, heargued, but both were ‘stupendous topics’.

Letter from Verdi to Ricordi, 9 March 1848; Carte # io Verdi $Cammarano, 22.



RIGOLETTO

• Librettist: Francesco Maria Piave

• Teatro La Fenice, 11 March 1851, Venice

• Source material: Le Roi s’amuse$ Victor Hugo,1832 %



Rigoletto and Love

• paternal/lial a ' ection

• romance

• eroticism



Le Roi s’amuse

• 1832

• plot ostensibly based on Francis I $ 1494(1547 %,but regarded as an attack on Louis Philippe I$ 1773(1850 %

• One performance at Comédie (Française, thenbanned by the censors



Verdi and Hugo



Verdi on Hugo

‘After the powerful e ' ect of Victor Hugo’s dramaseveryone has searched for e ' ect without recognising, inmy opinion, that it always resides in Hugo’s one goal:that of creating powerful, passionate and above alloriginal characters. Observe those characters such asSilva, Maria Tudor , Borgia, Marion, Tribouletand Francescoetc., etc. Great characters produce great situations, ande' ect is born naturally.’

Letter to Cesare De Sanctis, 16 May 1853; cit. Luzio, Carte # i Verdiani , Vol. I, 19.



Cast

Rigoletto, the duke’s jester & Felice Varesi

Gilda, his daughter &

Teresa BrambillaDuca di Mantova & Ra # aele Mirate

Sparafucile, an assassin & Paolo Damini

Maddalena, his sister & Annetta Casaloni



Opening scenes

• unprecedented variety of music ) duke’s comic (opera ballad, minuet, Rigoletto’s sarcasm,

Monterone’s curse

• ‘dramatic economy’

• Parker: ‘one of the richest and most complex

opening scenes hitherto attempted in 19th (century Italian opera’



musical form

• Five arias & only one in double (aria form $ ‘Possenteamor’, Act II %, three in single movements

• Five duets

• No grand nales to acts

• Male chorus only, with only one formal ‘chorus’ $ near endof Act I %

• No ‘aria di sortita’ $ entrance aria % for prima donna

• Elimination of recitative in Act II; sometimes unusual useof recit elsewhere $ eg., parlante duet between Rigolettoand Sparafucile in Act I; preface to storm in Act III %



Musical Form andcharacterisation

• Parker argues that the drama of the opera is centredaround Rigoletto, who ‘typically expresses himself in amusical style $ free, orchestrally accompanied arioso % that delivers the words with a minimum of repetition

or distortion, a style that minimizes the formalconstraints music may place upon words.’ "Parker, 298 #

• Yet these moments are juxtaposed with ‘traditional,“Rossinian” xed forms: areas in which the wordsfrequently lose their semantic freshness $ throughdistortion, selective repetition, or rearrangement % inthe service of strictly musical closure.’ "Parker, 298 #



Musical Form andcharacterisation

• The duke remains ‘musically immobile’: ‘hisopening ballata and nal canzoneare the moststylized numbers in the opera’;

• In contrast, Gilda matures emotionally throughthe opera, abandoning the vocal ornaments andformal conventions of her earlier music ‘andincreasingly adapts her musical language to thatof her father’. "Parker, 298 #



Letter to Carlo Borsi, 8 September 1852:

‘I conceived Rigoletto without arias, without nales, as anunbroken chain of duets, because I was convinced thatthat was most appropriate.’

Cesari and Luzio $ eds. %, I copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi , 497.



Other innovativeelements

• Onstage action juxtaposed by perspective of o '(

stage action

• Incompleteness of words & duke falls asleepmid( word; Gilda dies mid ( word

• Opera’s reliance on dramatic irony



What is ‘irony’?



What is ‘irony’?

• a rhetorical device playing on an incongruity

between literal and implied meaning.



what is ‘dramatic irony’



what is ‘dramatic irony’

• When the audience has information about

events within the narrative that the characterdoesn’t.



Dramatic Irony

• I, i: The courtiers believe Rigoletto has a mistress; welearn later in the act that she is his daughter.

• I, v: When the duke desires countess Ceprano, Rigolettoadvises him to kidnap her.

• I, vi: Rigoletto laughs at Monterone’s despair and threatsof vengeance; Monterone replies: ‘You who laugh at afather’s grief, may you be cursed!’

• I, viii: Gilda’s belief that the duke is a poor student;

• I, x: The blindfolding of Rigoletto so that he connives inthe kidnap of his own daughter $ end of Act I %



Dramatic Irony

• II, i: The duke thinks that he has lost Gilda; weknow she has been stolen by his courtiers;

• II: Rigoletto does not know the whereabouts of his

daughter & we do; • III: The duke thinks that ‘La donna è mobile‘ & we

see Gilda sacricing her life for his;

• III: Sparafucile and Maddalena think Gilda is a boy; • III: Rigoletto thinks that the body in the sack is

that of the duke.



‘Caro nome’ (Gilda), Act I



‘Cortigiani, vil razzadannata’ (Rigoletto, Act II)



Rigoletto and Love

• paternal/lial a ' ection

• romance • eroticism




‘There would be one place, but God help us! We would beagellated. It would be necessary to see Gilda with the Duke in the bedroom!! Do you understand me? In anycase, it would be a duet. A magnicent duet!! But thepriests, the monks and the hypocrites would cry scandal.

Oh, happy were the days when Diogenes could say in thepublic piazza to whoever was questioning what he did:‘Hominen quaero’! "‘I am looking for a man’#




Seduction and rape

• In nineteenth (century Italy, rape considered as a

crime against ‘honour’ and social value, ratherthan as a crime against the body and psyche

• Punishment therefore designed to correct loss of‘value’



Penalties

• Marriage with the victim $ rape sometimes usedas a strategy to enforce marriage %

• Payment of all ensuing childbirth costs

• Prison & four(month term $ 1832 %; three years$ 1857 %



Gazzetta musicale di Firenze,7 July 1853

‘What would "Verdi # reply to his daughter if, taken to Rigoletto, she asked him what the Duke did to poor

Gilda? Is it thus the theatre is meant to be an educator? And meanwhile those would (be geniuses drag it into the

mud; and, for the wretched satisfaction of "making # ane' ect, demoralise, brutalise and divide the public. Today

beauty is sought in the most peculiar formulae, in themost atrocious crimes, in the most repugnant

immorality.’



Gazzetta musicale di Firenze,29 September 1853

‘There you will learn that when you’re at the keyhole $ orbetter, at the crevice of a wall, if it has one % in order to see what’s happening in the room, and you see preparations

for the killing of a man, instead of arousing theneighbourhood in order to save him "…# you must allow

yourself to be killed for him & even more so if the person who is doing the looking is a woman, and if the one whomust be killed is the lover who has betrayed her. Perhaps

in this case another woman, if generous, would have

shouted for help or hammered immediately on the door inorder to interrupt that bloody work, or, if vengeful, would

have left him to be killed.’



Gilda’s death



Gilda’s death

This nal scene met with little acclamation from the critics & even from those whom might be regarded as generallysupportive of Verdi. Abramo Basevi declared bluntly: ‘The nal duetto makes very little e ' ect. However, it must not be forgotten

that music has nothing to lend to a situation so disgusting.’

Another critic, Marco Marcelliano Marcello, whose praise forthe storm scene was fulsome, was similarly disappointed: ‘the

nal scene, however well (treated, does not produce the e ' ectone would wish; the spirit remains too lacerated to be able tofeel other impressions’.



Extracts

• Opening scene

• Rigoletto’s scene with Sparafucile

• Gilda and the Duke ( ‘Caro nome’

• Rigoletto’s curse

• Quartet, storm, Gilda’s death



Gilda’s death

This nal scene met with little acclamation from the critics & evenfrom those whom might be regarded as generally supportive of Verdi. Abramo Basevi declared bluntly: ‘The nal duetto makes very littlee' ect. However, it must not be forgotten that music has nothing tolend to a situation so disgusting.’

Even Marco Marcelliano Marcello, whose praise for the storm scene was fulsome, was disappointed: ‘the nal scene, however well (treated,does not produce the e ' ect one would wish; the spirit remains toolacerated to be able to feel other impressions’.




‘There would be one place, but God help us! We would beagellated. It would be necessary to see Gilda with the Duke in the bedroom!! Do you understand me? In anycase, it would be a duet. A magnicent duet!! But thepriests, the monks and the hypocrites would cry scandal.

Oh, happy were the days when Diogenes could say in thepublic piazza to whoever was questioning what he did:‘Hominen quaero’!




Extracts

• Opening scene

• Rigoletto’s scene with Sparafucile

• Gilda and the Duke ( ‘Caro nome’

• Rigoletto’s curse

• Quartet, storm, Gilda’s death

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