Soloistsrporosekrans - Opera - The Next Generation [CD]

A Night At The OperaBased on Victor Hugo's Le Roi s'amuse, Verdi'sRigoletto centres on the curse of a father on the father ofthe title, the court jester to the Duke of Mantua. Theclimax of the action comes in the third act. Gilda, thebeloved daughter of Rigoletto, has been abducted byRigoletto's enemies at court and seduced by the Duke,for whose murder Rigoletto has hired an assassin,Sparafucile. The scene is by the banks of the RiverMincio, where Rigoletto and Gilda wait outside a twostoreyhouse. The Duke appears, disguised as anordinary officer, and enters the house, askingSparafucile for wine and for a room. He is joined bySparafucile's sister Maddalena, while Sparafucileleaves them together, going out into the street to askRigoletto if this is the man. In the quartet the Dukedeclares his love for Maddalena, while Gilda, observingthe scene from outside, is heart-broken at her lover'sfaithlessness, to which Rigoletto draws her attention. Inwhat follows Rigoletto tells his daughter to go homeand disguise herself in man's clothes, ready to leave thecity. Sparafucile is persuaded by Maddalena to spare theDuke, killing instead the first man to enter. In the eventthis is Gilda, willing to sacrifice herself for her lover.Rigoletto returns, ready to receive the body of hisvictim, and takes the murdered body in a sack, preparedto throw it into the nearby river. At this moment hehears the voice of the Duke from within the house, andrealises he has been tricked. He opens the sack and in aflash of lightning sees the face of his daughter Gilda.Mozart wrote his opera La clemenza di Tito (TheClemency of Titus) in 1791 for the coronation in Pragueof Leopold II as King of Bohemia. The libretto wasadapted from Metastasio and deals with the beneficenceof the Roman Emperor Titus, whose friend Sextus ispersuaded by Vitellia, jealous of Titus, to attempt hismurder, a plan from which she later relents, when itseems that she herself may marry the Emperor. Sextusmakes his attempt, Vitellia admits her complicity, andboth are pardoned. In his first-act aria Parto, parto,Sextus agrees to Vitellia's demands, to theaccompaniment of a basset clarinet, in the originalscoring, a part for the Vienna court clarinettist AntonStadler, for whom Mozart wrote other works in the lastyears of his life.Perhaps the best known operatic transformation ofGoethe's drama Faust is the 1858 opera by the Frenchcomposer Charles Gounod. In his third-act CavatinaFaust, left alone outside the house of his belovedMarguerite by his satanic guide Mephistopheles, singsof her innocence, but Mephistopheles is soon to returnwith a casket of jewels, a temptation for Marguerite.She is later to give way to Faust, in his transformedguise as a young man, and bears a child, which she kills.In the final scenes she is imprisoned, condemned todeath. Faust, assisted by Mephistopheles, tries topersuade her to escape with him, but she turns instead tothe angels, who will assure her salvation in spite of themachinatio