Page to the opera stage: Hugo’s and Verdi’s dangerous fools in ‘Le roi s’amuse’ & ‘Rigoletto’

Page to Opera Stage explores stories – real or fictional, old and new – that inspired operas and how these narratives have been edited and dramatized to adapt them to a new medium. In this episode we consider another play – this one loosely based on reality – which was later adapted into a (more fictionalized) opera: Victor Hugo’s “Le roi s’amuse” and Giuseppe Verdi’s and Francisco Maria Piaves “Rigoletto.”

Today Victor Hugo is perhaps best known for his mammoth novels “Les Miserables” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”. However, the French author has been remarkably productive throughout his 64-year career – and after that, if you include posthumous works. Most of his writing between 1827 and 1838 was for the Parisian stages, with plays like “Cromwell”, “Hernani”, “Lucrezia Borgia” and “Ruy Blas” keeping him busy and paid.

But not all debuts went smoothly. On November 22, 1832, his first performance piece “Le roi s’amuse” was performed only once before the censors prohibited its performance for 50 years. With a title that roughly translates as “The King is having fun” or “The King is having fun”, the work shocked with its biting depiction of the monarch of the 16th century. notorious fool triboulet. Hugo had dared to suggest that the god-given rights of kings might not be worth the ruin their whims left behind. And in this fictional story, the fool Triboulet dared to plan the king’s death after his daughter was kidnapped – an unthinkable move even in response to an unthinkable crime.

Hugo was outraged by his treatment. When the play was published in print, the author added – never silently – an essay in front of the text of the drama, which denounced the precedent of theater censorship. Based on the “Charter Truth”(Charter of Truth) of 1830, he argues that his case is about theft and repression, which sets a dangerous precedent in which the“ right of publication ”is enshrined.

Without a doubt, if we consider the minor importance of the work and the author here, the ministerial matter that hits them is not a big deal. It’s just a nasty little literary coup that has no other merit than not to miss the collection of arbitrary acts it follows. But as we climb higher we will see that this matter is not just a matter of a drama and a poet, but rather […] that freedom and property both flow fully into the question. These are high and serious interests; and although the author is forced to bring this important affair to the Théâtre-Français with a simple commercial lawsuit, unable to attack directly the ministry barricaded behind the Council of State’s inadmissibility objections, he hopes that his cause is above all a great one in the eyes Thing […] If necessary, he will speak for the independence of his art himself. He will claim his right with seriousness and simplicity, with no hatred or fear of anyone. He relies on the help of everyone, on the open and warm support of the press, on the fairness of public opinion, on the fairness of the courts. He will succeed, there is no doubt about that. The state of siege is lifted in the literary city as in the political city.

Unfortunately, he lost his battles against the censors and had to pay the legal fees. “Le roi s’amuse” was no longer published in 1883, two years before Hugo’s death. But his life was anything but dormant.

Giuseppe Verdi was no stranger to controversy during his career. When he came across Hugo’s text in 1850, he had changed and obfuscated details in the source materials for “I due Foscari”, “Ernani” (from Hugo’s “Hernani”) and “Stiffelio” in order to do justice to the censors and the audience – though at the last opera the changes did not prevent the frequent withdrawals. When the sharp criticism and high melodrama of “Le roi s’amuse” caught his attention and the librettist Francesco Maria Piave, he saw no obstacle too big for the opera stage.

In order to avoid the hostile reception of the Austrian authorities in Venice, the opera was relocated from France to Mantua. The king was demoted to a nameless duke and everyone was given new names. The criminal siblings Saltabadi and Maguelonne were renamed Sparafucile and Maddalena, the fool’s daughter changed from Blanche to Gilda, and the fool became the title character: Rigoletto. The opera was premiered on March 11, 1851 in front of a sold-out audience and an overnight triumph.

Social subtleties

In writing “Rigoletto”, Piave almost literally steals some of Hugo’s most poetic lines and maintains a rhyming scene that echoes French. Perhaps the most obvious – and most memorable – is when the fool arranges the assassination of his boss.

Triboulet

Your name Do you want to get to know mine too?

It’s called the crime and I am the punishment!

RIGOLETTO

Do you want to get to know mine too?

It’s a crime, I’m a punishment.

Along with the name changes, Verdi and Piave left many of the play’s most pungent social reviews on the cutting room floor. However, some victims seem more dramatic than politically motivated. When trimming a five-act play for a two-hour opera run, many named courtiers see their roles chopped up or completely cut out. Several scenes of the court skirmish – including the lines that gave “Le roi s’amuse” its name (“un roi qui s’amuse est un roi Hazardeux” – “a king who has fun is a dangerous king”) – are disappeared. Rigoletto thus becomes the primary eye through which the Duke’s actions are seen, rather than one of the king’s many keen observers and commentators.

In addition to reducing the number of soloists required, “Rigoletto” plays more of a family tragedy than a seditious commentary on absolute power. The role of Blanche / Gilda remains relatively uncut, and she is introduced much earlier in the narrative after a courtroom scene. The text of the piece and the libretto of the opera read very differently, with the former emphasizing the witty repartee and the latter the fragile, secret family that is destroyed by the Duke’s lust.

What’s in a name

Verdi and Piave gave added meaning to their main characters’ new names when they appeased the censors. Rigoletto could have been borrowed from the 1835 “Rigoletti, ou le Dernier des Fous” variety theater, even a play on the French “rigolo” – “funny”. The name turns into a cruel joke as the opera turns into tragedy.

Hugo’s doomed daughter Blanche – “white” in French – conjures up purity and innocence with her name. Instead of opting for the Italian “Bianca”, the team opted for the name of their heroine Gilda – an Italian name derived from the old Germanic for “victim”. Like her father, her name takes on a new meaning when she decides to offer herself to the assassin instead of the duke. Unlike her father, her name is more of a sincere premonition than a dramatic irony.

The curse

Finally, Verdi musically and dramatically emphasizes Hugo’s motif of the violated father. In Hugo’s first act M de Saint Vallier – the father of a girl abused and abused by the king – cursed triboulet for laughing at a father’s pain. The curse comes into play, of course, but remains largely unmentioned in the back half of the piece. Hugo may rely on the audience to connect the themes, but Verdi never misses an opportunity for a thundering musical motif.

The prelude to “Rigoletto” begins with a chord crescendo in the brass section that changes throughout the time until the Duke’s party begins on stage. The chord returns when Monterone (renamed Saint Vallier) curses Rigoletto, and then again at the end of the first act when he realizes that Gilda has been kidnapped (“Ah, la maledizione!”). Verdi repeats this tremendous motif and Rigoletto his excruciating cry at the end of the opera, after Gilda’s death. In “Rigoletto” fate is as inevitable and inevitable as the power of a king – and the power and urgency of opera has secured its leading place on the opera stages of the world for 170 years.

All “Le roi s’amuse” quotations come from the Edition project Gutenberg (only in French); Translations come from the author. Piave’s libretto to Verdi’s “Rigoletto” can be found here in Italian and English