Opera and Me - Umberto Tosi
Giuseppe Verdi by Giovanni Boldini When I was five years old, my aunt Nina dressed me in a little blue suit and took me to a New England Conservatory of Music production of Giuseppe Verdi 's Rigoletto at Jordan Hall in Boston with my mother in the role of Gilda. Being as this was my first live opera, my aunt sat us unobtrusively in the last row of a side balcony, with an exit handy in case I didn't last. Before each act, she explained the story of the opera, based on a Victor Hugo play, as best she could in terms I could understand, censoring the racy parts about Duke of Mantua's womanizing. Just before the third act, she sketched out the tragic conclusion in which Gilda is murdered by an assassin – Sparafucile – who had been hired by her doting father, the hunchback jester Rigoletto himself, to kill the Duke. Gilda is stabbed by Sparafucile as she enters an inn by night trying to save the Duke, whom she loves despite his perfidiousness. As we settled into ou...