Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Rigoletto is based on Victor Hugo’s play Le roi s’amuse.
Verdi and his librettist Francesco Maria Piave adapted Hugo’s controversial 1832 drama for the stage. The original play portrays the French king Francis I and his court jester Triboulet. For the opera, the setting and character names were changed to satisfy censorship in Venice, where the work premiered in 1851.
Rigoletto’s title character is a court jester whose daughter Gilda falls in love with the Duke of Mantua. The opera combines political power, family loyalty, deception, and revenge. Its best-known musical number is the Duke’s aria “La donna è mobile.”
The opera is sometimes mistaken for a direct setting of Hugo’s play because many central relationships remain similar. However, the Italian opera changes the names, location, and political details. Verdi’s score also gives Rigoletto an unusually complex dramatic role, making him both a comic court figure and a vulnerable father.