Rigoletto (From "La Donna E Mobile"): A Song History
"La donna è mobile" comes from Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto, a three-act opera on an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave that opened at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851.[1][2] Its story is taken from Victor Hugo's play Le Roi s'amuse, which was banned after its 1832 premiere and not staged again for fifty years, though it still circulated fairly widely in print; in 1850 Verdi called it "the greatest story of modern times."[2] Venice was then part of the Habsburg domain, and its authorities at first forbade an opera on Hugo's play, whose womanizing ruler and planned killing troubled the censors, and allowed the subject only once the setting and characters had been substantially altered.[3] The Metropolitan Opera's account of the opera's creation adds that when the censors, condemning the plot as immoral, demanded a more flattering Duke, Verdi threatened to drop the project, and the censors gave way.[2]
Francesco Guardi, The Fenice Theater in Venice, pen and brown ink, brush with brown and gray wash over traces of black chalk. The Fenice theater in Venice, where Rigoletto had its premiere in 1851; the drawing is older than the opera.
The Duke of Mantua sings this jaunty number about women's fickleness early in Act III, while Gilda listens nearby.[4] LA Opera tells the story that Verdi kept the score locked up during the last rehearsals and gave the tenor, Raffaele Mirate, his aria only a few nights before the opening, and that Venetians were singing it on the way out of the theater and all over the city by the next morning.[4] Enrico Caruso recorded it in New York on February 1, 1904, with piano, and again with orchestra in Camden, New Jersey, on March 16, 1908, both for Victor.[5][6] The tune has since traveled well beyond the opera house, turning up, as LA Opera notes, in cartoons and in commercials for tomato sauce.[4]
Shelley Stevens arranges it, under the title "Rigoletto (From 'La Donna E Mobile')," in Classical Music For Mountain Dulcimer, a Fingers Of Steel collection of solo classical pieces in DAD tuning, where every arrangement uses the 6.5 fret, many also need the 1.5 fret, and a few a 0.5 fret.[7]
Sources
- Britannica: "Rigoletto".
- Metropolitan Opera, Education: "Rigoletto".
- Metropolitan Opera, Education: "Dodging the Censor's Pen".
- LA Opera: "The Fickle Aria (or, How to Get Away with Everything by Singing)".
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix B-995. La donna è mobile / Enrico Caruso".
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix B-6033. La donna è mobile / Enrico Caruso".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Shelley Stevens, Classical Music For Mountain Dulcimer".
- Image: Francesco Guardi, The Fenice Theater in Venice, pen and brown ink, brush with brown and gray wash over traces of black chalk. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.