Rigoletto

Just a few days after The Marriage of Figaro, it was time for my second opera.  Up next was Rigoletto, or as S liked to call it, Rigatoni.

Speaking of which, this was going to be our Italian-themed food night.  However, everything had been such a whirlwind that I really didn't have a chance to even go shopping for my menu, let along make it.  Instead, we had some good ol' Sauce on the Side (calzones are Italian!) before heading off to the opera in a torrential downpour.

It was not quite the comedic who-loves-who spectacle that Figaro was.  Somehow I think I have perhaps never seen Rigoletto before -- which seems astonishing to me.  But the story sure didn't sound familiar to me.  Boy, is it dark.

Rigoletto is the town jester.  The duke is a womanizer, who falls in lust with Rigoletto's overprotected daughter Gilda.  Through a series of machinations, Gilda believes she loves the duke as well.  Rigoletto is able to secret her away from the duke again, and thinks that he can convince her that she does not love the duke after all.  That does not quite work out the way he planned, and the curse he has been running from comes true in the end.