Live from the Met: Rigoletto
Verdi's much-loved opera on a theme close to his heart - the relationship between a father and daughter. The title role is not the innocent young heroine Gilda, nor the antihero the Duke of Mantua, who seduces and then abandons her - but Gilda's father, the Duke's court jester Rigoletto. Rigoletto is the archetypal tragic figure: a despised hunchback who is his own worst enemy. His overprotective cosseting of Gilda makes her easy prey for the honey-tongued Duke, and when Rigoletto plots revenge, it backfires hideously.
Chorus and Orchestra of the New
York Metropolitan Orchestra, conductor Maurizio Benini
Act
7.30 New York Stories
Another specially commissioned interval talks for Radio 3 in which novelists, essayists and playwrights who have moved to New York present portraits of the city through fiction and non-fiction. In this programme, Egyptian writer Andre Aciman catches the bus on his favourite Manhattan route.
8.00 Act 2
8.25 The Met Opera Quiz
Martin Bernheimer puts listeners' questions to Father Lee Owen , Frank Rizzo and Sarah Bryan Miller.
8.55 Act 3