As already in his Luisa Miller, Verdi’s eponymous figure Rigoletto is not a man of rank, but a representative of the people, in this case a malformed court jester. The composer devoted himself with the greatest care to the psychological shaping of his hero. This may have been due to the fact that the Venetian censorship had initially banned the opera for insulting majesty, and that it could only be performed on stage after numerous changes. Since the libretto was changed several times and the scenic structure was also shaken, the unity of the play had to be preserved and restored in other ways. Thus Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) transposed it into the personal, tragic conflict of the Rigoletto, which is decisive for the plot and the connection between the characters. The composer succeeded excellently in combining recitatives, arias and duets into a higher musical unity and in dissolving the old structure of the number opera. He himself even regarded his work as revolutionary.
After the music had been criticized as too shallow and superficial by contemporaries, especially by followers of Richard Wagner, only Igor Stravinsky was able to overturn this verdict: He praised the ingenuity of the opera. Today, "Rigoletto" is part of the standard repertoire of every opera house, and the popular arias "La donna è mobile" or "Caro nome", which are extremely demanding to sing, are often performed in song recitals in isolation.