Culture Shock: Flashpoints: Theater, Film, and Video: Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto
Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi signs a contract in April 1850 to write a new work for the 1850-'51 season of Venice's La Fenice theater. Among the proposed subjects is an adaptation of Victor Hugo's play, Le Roi s'amuse, which tells the dark story of a lecherous king, Francis I, his hunchbacked jester, Tribolet, and the