Pari siamo

After meeting Sparafucile, Rigoletto reflects on the offer and finds similarities between the two of them:

Pari siamo!...io la lingua,
egli ha il pugnale.
L’uomo son io che ride,
ei quel che spegne!
Forzarmi deggio e farlo! Oh dannazione!
Odio a voi, cortigiani schernitori!

We are two of a kind: my weapon is my tongue,
his is a dagger;
I am a man of laughter,
he strikes the fatal blow!
And I must contrive to do it! Oh, damnation!
My hate upon you, sneering courtiers!

His desire for revenge afer a life of being put down as a jester increases (1:53).

Questo padrone mio,
giovin, giocondo, sì possente, bello,
sonnecchiando mi dice:
Fa ch’io rida, buffone!

My master,
young, carefree, so powerful, so handsome,
half-dozing, says:
“Fool, make me laugh!”

With some reservation about what he is about to comit, he thinks of his daughter, the only reminder of his human condition (3:16):

Mi coglierà sventura?
Ah no, è follia!

Will some disaster befall me?
Ah no, this is folly!

Rigoletto is a melodrama in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi and libretto by Francesco Maria Piave based on the drama Le Roi s’amuse by Victor Hugo. Originally named La Maledizione (“The Curse”), had a triumphant premiere in La Fenice in 1851, where people where allegedly singing “La donna è mobile” on the streets the following day.

Brief synopsis of Rigoletto (spoiler alert): Rigoletto is the story of Rigoletto, a jester in the palace of Duke of Mantua, whose beloved daughter, Gilda, whom he overprotects as the gift of his only love affair, is seduced by the Duke of Mantua, among many others. One of which was the daughter of Count of Monterone, who confronts the Duke and gets cruelly mocked by Rigoletto on its failure to defend his daughter’s honour. Enraged by the jester, Monterone casts a curse on Rigoletto. This is the main leit motiv of the work and will define the fatal ending. In revenge, Gilda is kidnapped by courtisans and taken to the palace, where she is raped by the Duke of Mantua. Rigoletto plans his own vengeance by hiring the hitman Sparafucile to murder the Duke. But Gilda, still madly in love with the Duke, hands herself to Sparafucile to die in his place. Finally, when Rigoletto comes to throw the corpse to whom he believes to be the Duke to the river, is astonished to hear the tune of such in the distance (“La donna é mobile”) and snaps in horror when discovers the body of Gilda inside the stead by the Monterone curse came to fruition.

Full Libretto:
Cast: Ingvar Wixell as Rigoletto and Count of Monterone, Luciano Pavarotti as Duke of Mantua, Edita Gruberova as Gilda, Ferruccio Furlanetto as Sparafucile, Victoria Vergara as Maddalena, Fedora Barbieri as Giovanna, Bernd Weikl as Marullo, Remy Corazza as Borsa, Roland Bracht as Count of Ceprano and Kathleen Kuhlmann as Countess of Ceprano.

Wiener Philharmoniker, directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, 1981.

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