Scene  |  Full Cast  |  Story  |  Stars Bios  |  Composer Bio

The Scene: Italy, 16^th Century Mantua

The Cast:

Courtiers, ladies and gentlemen of the court, servants

(Production and Artists subject to Change)

The Story

          In this tragic opera, the title character, Rigoletto, is a hunchbacked court jester noted for his witty invectives against the noblemen of the court. He lives in fear that his only daughter, Gilda, will be seduced by the Duke, who makes light of his many conquests. However, because of his own “tongue of malice,” a curse is placed upon him. Soon after, noblemen kidnap his daughter and take her to the palace. There the Duke, whom she believes to be a local student she met at church, seduces her. Rigoletto, appalled and terrified by the news of the Duke’s latest conquest, vows revenge and hires an assassin to kill the Duke. Even though Gilda sees and hears her erstwhile lover seducing the assassin’s sister, she still loves him. She overhears the assassin’s sister pleading with him to spare the Duke. The assassin tells her that if a suitable replacement can be found, he will spare the Duke. Still in love with the Duke despite his infidelity, Gilda dresses as a man and enters the assassin’s house where the assassin mortally wounds her, wraps her in a bag, and delivers her to Rigoletto, telling him that his nemesis lies dead within. As the jester begins to cast the body into the river, he hears the Duke’s familiar song; he hurriedly opens the bag to reveal his daughter, who dies in his arms. Overcome with grief and despair, he turns his head to the heavens and screams in agony: “The curse!”
View an extended synopsis fo Rigoletto

Star and Conductor Bio

	Vytautas Juozapaitis (baritone) Rigoletto          Vytautas Juozapaitis has been a principal soloist with the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre since 1990 and has made notable appearances in the United States as Don Giovanni, Germont and Rigoletto while touring with Teatro Lirico D'Europa. His repertoire includes all of the principal baritone roles in operas by Verdi, Puccini, Mozart and Tchaikovsky and the other major opera composers. In addition, he has performed at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival (1992), the Savonlinna opera Festival (1993), the Festival of Oratory Music in Wroclaw (1993), the Salzburg Festival (1994), the Dalhalla Opera Festival in Sweden, and the Festival for Music and Arts "Pro baltica" in Torun, Poland (2003). He has made guest appearances in operas around the world, including appearances in Poland, Germany, Spain, Russia, India, Italy, France, Japan, Taiwan and the United States, among many others.
	Mauricio Trejo (tenor) Duke of Mantua            Mr. Trejo has performed a wide variety of roles, including Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly with Metro Lyric Opera, Don José in Carmen with Metro Lyric Opera, the Italian Tenor in a preview performance of Der Rosenkavalier with the New Israeli Opera, Cavaradossi in Tosca with New York Grand Opera, and the Duke in Rigoletto with New Rochelle Opera, to name but a few. He has also appeared with Opera Orchestra of New York at Carnegie Hall, the New York’s Gateway Classical Society, Mexico’s Orquesta Filarmónica de Acapulco, and the Symphony Orchestra of Luzern. Mr. Trejo was the recipient of the Plácido Domingo Encouragement Grant and the Panasonic Scholar of the Year Award. His discography includes The American Tenors, a program aired nationwide in 2003 on PBS with both CD and DVD produced by Sony, his first solo CD, La Voz del Amor, a compilation of Mexican songs in tribute to his beloved country, and a DVD of Der Rosenkavalier on the EMI Classical label.
	Snejana Dramcheva (soprano) Gilda           Born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, Mrs. Dramcheva made her artistic debut in 1984 with the Plovdiv Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Dobrin Petkov. Since then, she has performed in roles such as Valencienne in Merry Widow with Czech Opera Prague and Violetta in La Traviata with Teatro Lirico, Pamina in Die Zauberflote with Mozart Festival Opera, Musetta in La Bohème and Lola in Cavalleria Rusticana, both with Teatro Lirico. She has received several awards, including the Grand-Prix in Pamplona, Spain, the first-place prize in Pavia, Italy, and the Audience-Grand-Prix at the Giuseppe Verdi Competition in Parma, Italy. In recent years she has been a frequent guest artist at opera stages in Milan, Barcelona, Bilbao, Lille, Madrid, Amsterdam, Paris, Munich, Tokyo, Valencia, and Zurich, to name but a few.
	Krassimir Topolov Conductor          The young Bulgarian maestro received his musical educated in Vienna, Austria. In addition to conducting hundreds of performances for Teatro Lirico D'Europa on tour in central Europe, he is a frequent guest conductor with opera companies in Bulgaria and other Eastern European opera countries.
	Mikhail Kolelishvili (bass) Sparafucile             Russian bass Mikhail Kolelishvili is a member of the Kirov Opera. He has performed all of the bass roles in the Mozart and Verdi operas as well as Khan Koncha in Borodin's Prince Igor, King Rene in Tchaikovsky's Iolanta and the Tsar in Rimski-Korsakov's The Tale of Tsar Saltan. He made his American debut with Teatro Lirico D'Europa and Mozart Festival Opera on their 2006-2007 US tours as Sparafucile in Rigoletto, the Commendatore in Don Giovanni, Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor, and Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte. He has participated in several competitions and won several awards, including first prize at the Rimski-Korsakov Fifth International Competition for Young Opera Singers, the Third International E. Obraztsova Competition for Young Opera Singers, the Monyushko Competition in Warsaw, Poland, and the Adamo Didur Prize for Bass.
	Viara Zhelezova (mezzo-soprano) Maddalena                The young Bulgarian mezzo soprano graduated from the National Conservatory of Music in 1985 and joined the roster of the Bulgarian National Opera, where she has performed leading mezzo soprano roles alongside such singers as Ghena Dimitrova, Nicolai Giuselev, Anna Tomova Sintova and others. She has appeared as a guest artist with opera companies throughout Eastern Europe and has been a principal soloist with Teatro Lirico D'Europa since 1992. She has enjoyed a huge success with Teatro Lirico on tour in the U.S. as Rosina in Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) and with the Czech Opera Prague as Prince Orlofsky in its lavish production of Die Fledermaus.

Composer Bio

Guiseppe Verdi: Born in 1813 in the Italian village of Le Roncole near Busseto, Giuseppe Verdi spent his early years studying the organ. By the age of seven, he had become an organist at San Michele Arcangelo. It was there that the young Verdi was an altar boy and, according to myth, his mother saved him from the French in 1814. In 1823, Verdi moved to Busseto and attended the music school run by Antonio Provesi. By the age of 13, he was an assistant conductor of the Busseto orchestra. After finishing the school, Verdi applied for admission to the Milan Conservatory. He was rejected for admission, although one of the examiners suggested that he "forget about the Conservatory and choose a maestro in the city." Verdi studied composition in Milan with Vincenzo Lavigna, a composer and the maestro at La Scala. Verdi bounced back and forth between Milan and Busseto until he was named maestro of the Busseto Philharmonic in March 1836.

By May 1836, he had married childhood sweetheart, Margherita Barezzi, his greatest benefactor's daughter. He returned to Milan several years later, this time with a young family.

Verdi's first opera, Oberto, was brought to the stage at La Scala in November 1839 and ran for multiple performances. The noted Ricordi firm published Oberto and, based upon his initial operatic effort, Verdi won a contract for three additional operas. He began work on his next opera, Un Giorno di Regno, but was interrupted when, one by one, the Verdis fell ill. A little over the course of a year, Verdi lost his son, his daughter, and his beloved wife to illness. Unfortunately, Un Giorno was a complete failure.

Verdi vowed never to compose another comedy and developed a fatalistic belief in inescapable destiny. Even so, the director at La Scala kept faith with Verdi, who later declared that with his next work, Nabucco, "my musical career really began." At dress rehearsals for Nabucco in the La Scala theater, carpenters making repairs to the house gradually stopped hammering and, seating themselves on scaffolding and ladders, listened with rapt attention to what the composer considered a lackluster chorus rendering of "Va, pensiero." At the close of the number, the workers pounded the woodwork with cries of "Bravo, bravo, viva il maestro!" The opening of Nabucco was a triumph. Verdi was famous, commanding a higher fee than any other composer of his time.

I Lombardi followed Nabucco and won an unprecedented victory over Austrian censors. Verdi's triumph in retaining the libretto and melodic themes the censors had hoped to ban as "religious" in nature forged the composer's lifelong reputation as an ideological hero of the Italian people. This would be the first of his many battles with censors for artistic freedom.

Over the next seven years, the composer penned ten additional operas of varied success, gradually making the transition between two distinct eras of Verdi composition. Initially captive of the "bel canto" style and heir to Donizetti's artistic throne, Verdi continually experimented to produce his own operatic genre in which melodic drama and identifiable musical essence of character took center stage as an equal to vocal purity and elegance.

It was an inspired stroke of boldness about which Verdi commented in explaining the innovative core of his work, Il Trovatore, "I think (if I'm not mistaken) that I have done well; but at any rate I have done it in the way that I felt it." In saying so, he defined his own creative hallmark. Although a musical genius, Verdi composed spontaneously from the heart. A brilliantly schooled musician, he placed emotional sensibility above intellect in all that he wrote. In the process, he created the remarkable marriage of dramatic characterization and vocal power, an indelible artistic signature.

The creation of an operatic tour de force based upon his ingenious artistic formulation assured Verdi's immortality, beginning in 1851 with Rigoletto, followed soon after by Il Trovatore, La Traviata, and ultimately in 1871, by Aida. Even without the masterpieces that followed - Simon Boccanegra, Un Ballo in Maschera, La Forza del Destino, and Don Carlos or his great Requiem Mass - the Maestro could have afforded to rest on his musical achievements and stand unchallenged as the premier operatic composer of any age. In fact, with the success of Aida, Verdi seemed to have abandoned composing altogether, producing no new works for fifteen years.

Fortunately for posterity, an electrifying libretto, Otello, created by poet Arrigo Boito, brought the composer out of his self-imposed retirement. The opening of Otello in February of 1887 attracted an international audience to Milan for a dramatic event which ended only after the citizenry had showered Verdi with gifts and applause throughout twenty curtain calls and towed his carriage to the hotel. Public festivities continued until dawn.

In 1893, with the premiere of Falstaff, Verdi and his adoring audience repeated the entire sequence of events at La Scala - all in honor of a comedy he had vowed as a young man never to write. The maestro finally retreated to his country home in Sant' Agata with his second wife, singer Giuseppina Strepponi. They spent several peaceful years in retirement until her death in 1897. His wife's death left Verdi in a state of unbearable grief. He immediately fled Sant' Agata for the Grand Hotel in Milan and, after four unhappy years, Verdi died in 1901, the victim of a massive stroke. Verdi's death left all Italy in mourning. He still is revered throughout the music world as the greatest of operatic composers and, more particularly, in Italy as a patriotic hero and champion of human rights.