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Giuseppe Verdi – From La Scala: Rigoletto

Posted By: frangarbla
Giuseppe Verdi – From La Scala: Rigoletto

Giuseppe Verdi – From La Scala: Rigoletto
DbPowerAMP, FLAC (tracks, no cue) + MP3 (320@ CBR) | 643.33 Mb (FLAC) + 358.17 Mb (MP3) | 120:02 minutes | Full artwork and covers.
classical, opera | Deutsche Grammophon Records,

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. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851. It is considered by many to be the first of the operatic masterpieces of Verdi’s middle-to-late career. Verdi was commissioned to write a new opera by the theatre La Fenice, Venice in 1850, when he was already a well known composer with a certain freedom of choosing the works he would prefer. He then asked 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. Verdi soon stumbled upon Victor Hugo’s Le roi s’amuse. He later explained that “It contains extremely powerful positions … The subject is great, immense, and has a character that is one of the most important creations of the theatre of all countries and all Ages”. It was a highly controversial subject indeed, and Hugo himself had already had trouble with censorship in France, which had banned productions of his play after its first performance nearly twenty years earlier (and would continue to ban it for another thirty years). 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. From the beginning, Verdi was aware of the risks as was Piave. A letter has been found in 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, and the two remained at risk and underestimated the power and the intentions of Austrians. Even the friendly Guglielmo Brenna, secretary of La Fenice who had promised them that they would not have problems with the censors, was in error. At the beginning of the summer of 1850, some rumors started to spread that Austrian censorship was going to forbid the production. They considered the Hugo work to verge on lese majeste, 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. The work was secretly called by the composers The Malediction (or The Curse), and this unofficial title was used by Austrian censor De Gorzkowski (who evidently had known of it from spies) to enforce, if needed, the violent letter by which he definitively denied consent to its production. 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 substituted 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. 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. In the end the parties were able to agree that the action of the opera had to be moved from the royal court of France to a duchy of France or Italy, as well as a renaming of the characters. In the Italian version the Duke reigns over Mantova and belongs to the Gonzaga family: the Gonzaga had been long time extinct in mid-19th Century, and the Dukedom of Mantova did not exist anymore, so nobody could be offended. The scene in which the sovereign retires in Gilda’s bedroom would be deleted and the visit of the Duke to the Taverna (inn) was not intentional anymore, but provoked by a trick. The hunchback (originally Triboulet) became Rigoletto (from French rigolo = funny). The name of the work too was changed. For the première, Verdi had Felice Varesi as Rigoletto, the young tenor Raffaele Mirate as the Duke, and Teresina Brambilla as Gilda (though Verdi would have preferred Teresa De Giuli Borsi). Teresina Brambilla was a well-known soprano coming from a family of singers and musicians; one of her nieces, Teresa Brambilla, was the wife of Amilcare Ponchielli. The opening was a complete triumph, especially the scenica dramatica, and the Duke’s cynical aria, “La donna è mobile”, was sung in the streets the next morning. 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 was forced to swear he would not sing or even whistle the tune of “La donna è mobile”. Many years later, Giulia Cori, Varesi’s daughter, described her father’s performance at the premiere. Playing the original Rigoletto, her father was really uncomfortable with the false hump he had to wear; he was so uncertain that, even though he was quite an experienced singer, he had a panic attack when it was his turn to enter the stage. Verdi immediately realised he was paralysed and roughly pushed him on the stage, so he appeared with a clumsy tumble. The audience, thinking it was a gag, was very amused.

Coro e Orchestra Del Teatro Alla Scala
Rafael Kubelik: conductor
Carlo Bergonzi: Il Duca Di Mantova
Dietirch Fiescher-Dieskau: Rigoletto
Renata Scotto: Gilda
Fiorenza Cossotto: Maddalena
Ivo Vinco: Sparafucile

cd1:
01. Act 1: Preludio (Orchestra)
02. Act 1, Scene 1: Della mia bella incognita borghese (Duca/Borsa)
03. Act 1, Scene 1: Questa o quella (Duca)
04. Act 1, Scene 1: Partite? Crudele! (Duca/Contessa Ceprano)
05. Act 1, Scene 1: In testa che avete (Rigoletto/Borsa/Coro)
06. Act 1, Scene 1: Gran nuova! gran nuova! (Marullo/Borsa/Coro/Duca/Ceprano/Rigoletto)
07. Act 1, Scene 1: Ch'io gli parli (Monterone/Duca/Borsa/Rigoletto/Marullo/Ceprano/Coro) 0
08. Act 1, Scene 1: O tu che la feste audace (Duca/Borsa/Rigoletto/Marullo/Ceprano/Coro)
09. Act 1, Scene 2: Quel vecchio maledivami (Rigoletto/Sparafucile)
10. Act 1, Scene 2: Pari siamo! (Rigoletto)
11. Act1, Scene 2: Figlia!…Mio padre! (Rigoletto/Gilda
12. Act 1, Scene 2: Ah! veglia, o donna (Rigoletto/Gilda)
13. Act 1, Scene 2: Giovanna, ho dei rimorsi (Gilda/Giovanna/Duca)
14. Act 1, Scene 2: E il sol dell'anima (Duca/Gilda/Ceprano/Borsa/Giovanna)
15. Act 1, Scene 2: Addio, speranza ed anima (Duca/Gilda)
16. Act 1, Scene 2: Gualtier Maldè …Caro nome (Gilda/Borsa/Ceprano/Marullo)
17. Act 1, Scene 2: Riedo!…perche? …Silenzio! (Rigoletto/Borsa/Ceprano/Marullo)
18. Act 1, Scene 2: Zitti, zitti, moviamo a vendetta (Borsa/Marullo/Ceprano/Coro)
19. Act 1, Scene 2: Soccorso, padre mio! (Gilda/Borsa/Marullo/Ceprano/Coro/Rigoletto)
cd2:
01. Act 2: Ella mi fu rapita! (Duca)
02. Act 2: Parmi veder le lagrime (Duca)
03. Act 2: Duca, Duca! …. Ebben? (Borsa/Marullo/Ceprano/Coro/Duca)
04. Act 2: Povero Rigoletto! (Marullo/Rigoletto/Coro/Borsa/Ceprano/Un paggio)
05. Act 2: Cortigiani, vil razza dannata (Rigoletto)
06. Act 2: Mio padre!…Dio! mia Gilda! (Gilda/Rigoletto)
07. Act 2: Tutte le feste al tempio (Rigoletto/Gilda)
08. Act 2: Compiuto pur quanto (Rigoletto/Gilda/Usciere/Monterone)
09. Act 2: Sì, vendetta, tremenda vendetta (Rigoletto/Gilda)
10. Act 3: E l'ami? (Rigoletto/Gilda/Duca/Sparafucile)
11. Act 3: La donna è mobile (Duca/Sparafucile/Rigoletto)
12. Act 3: Un dì, se ben rammentomi (Duca/Gilda/Maddalena/Rigoletto)
13. Act 3: Bella figlia dell'amore (Duca/Maddalena/Gilda/Rigoletto)
14. Act 3: Venti scudi hai tu detto? (Rigoletto/Sparafucile/Duca/Maddalena/Coro)
15. Act 3: E amabile invero (Maddalena/Sparafucile/Gilda/Coro)
16. Act 3: Della vendetta alfin giunge l'istante (Rigoletto/Sparafucile/Duca)
17. Act 3: Chi mai, chi è qui in sua vece? (Rigoletto/Gilda)

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