12/15/1981 125m

Verdi: Rigoletto (1981)

"Yes, the King arrives, eventually!"

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Overview

The opera's dramatic structure frames and enhances the characters. Scenes of magnificence regularly alternate with scenes of darkness and squalor. From sumptuous interiors, we move to a dark street, a lonely inn. The secondary figures are astutely counterpoised: the plotting courtiers against the plotting Sparafucile and Maddalena (also ambiguously tender-hearted). When Rigoletto says "Pari siamo", he could be expressing the motto of the whole work: the beautiful and the ugly can be equally good, equally evil.

Brian Large

Director

John Dexter

Director

Francesco Maria Piave

Writer