“Ch'hai di nuovo, buffon?” or What's new with Rigoletto

Thoughts onRigoletto

“…Without this curse, what point, what significance does the drama have?” (Werfel and Stefan, 1942, p. 87). This view, however, is disputed by Cormac Newark in a chapter devoted to Rigoletto in the recent Cambridge Companion to Verdi (Newark, 2004). Newark holds that the story does not need the curse, even going so far as to demonstrate literally how, in his view, the narrative can be told without it.…”