Verdi: Rigoletto

Rigoletto is the jester at the court of the Duke of Mantua. His back is hunched and he considers himself unsightly. His job is to humiliate the courtiers. The Duke laughs at this and the others do not. Women are the Duke’s only concern. He pursues every woman he sees. Lately he has noticed a young woman on her way to church every Sunday. There is something nobody knows. That woman is Gilda, the jester’s daughter. She has seen him too and has fallen for him. Then Count Monterone arrives at court. The man is furious with the Duke over his own daughter. Rigoletto mocks him and the Duke laughs. Monterone lays a heavy curse on both of them. Afterwards the courtiers discover that he is secretly living with a young woman. They still do not know whose daughter she is. Ingvar Wixell and Luciano Pavarotti sing in the hundred and twenty eight minute opera film, a German production Jean-Pierre Ponnelle finished in 1982.