Giuseppe Verdi (VAIR-dee) is known as "Mr. Opera." He produced the most high quality operas of any composer. His melodies are beautiful and memorable. During his lifetime all Italy was singing Verdi melodies. He was born to a poor family in a tiny Italian village. A wealthy shopkeeper in a nearby town loved music and paid for Verdi's music education. Verdi later married the shopkeeper's daughter. This wife and two children all died within a short period. Verdi was devastated, but one good friend from La Scala opera house in Milan begged Verdi to overcome his grief and write an opera. That opera was Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who took the Jews into exile). Italy saw the Jews as a symbol of oppressed Italians. The chorus from Nabucco became an Italian cry for independence and freedom. It made Verdi famous.

In this volume we will learn a theme from Rigoletto called La donna é mobile, which means,"women are fickle." 

Rigoletto is a hunchback, a court jester. His only virtue is his love for his daughter, Gilda.  Rigoletto works for the evil Duke of Mantua, who loves to seduce women. Count Monterone pronounces a curse on Rigoletto for helping the Duke arrange a love affair with his daughter. Rigoletto has kept his own daughter, Gilda, hidden in a distant part of the city so that she will will not be corrupted by the evil court. The Duke has seen Gilda going to church and has followed her to her home. He wins her love while pretending to be a poor student. A group of the Duke's courtiers steal Gilda from her home and take her to the court. There she learns that her disguised lover is the Duke, not a student.

Rigoletto tries to get Gilda to come home, but she says that she loves the Duke. Rigoletto decides that the only way to get his daughter back is to murder the Duke. Rigoletto pays an assassin to kill the Duke. However, the murderer decides to kill the first person to come along, dump the body in a sack, and give it to Rigoletto as proof that the job was done. The first person the assassin meets is Gilda, disguised as a student on her way to meet the Duke. As Rigoletto is taking the sack with the body to dump it in the river, he hears the Duke singing, "La donna é mobile." To his horror, he discovers that the body in the sack is his daughter's body.