For three months the Duke of Mantua has been lusting after a lovely girl. He has found out where she lives, and that a mysterious man visits her every night, but he has no idea who she is. One woman is as good as another for the Duke, and when the Countess Ceprano catches his eye he sweeps her away before her husband’s eye.

Rigoletto cruelly taunts Ceprano about the Duke seducing his wife. Marullo rushes in with a diverting bit of gossip: Rigoletto has a lover!
Ceprano enlists his friends in a plot to wreak revenge on Rigoletto. They have all felt the lash of the hunchback’s tongue, and they are delighted at the chance to pay him back.

Monterone storms in, accusing the Duke of seducing his daughter. Rigoletto mocks the old man savagely, but Monterone will not be silenced. The furious Duke has him arrested, and as he is led away he curses both the Duke and Rigoletto.

Scene ii
Rigoletto’s house

As Rigoletto hurries home he meets Sparafucile, a hired killer who gets his sister to lure his victims to their death – a fateful and disturbing encounter.
Rigoletto broods on his likeness to the killer: both are paid to destroy others, Rigoletto with words, Sparafucile with weapons. His mind is filled with Monterone’s curse, and he rails against his deformity and vilifies the Duke’s friends who hate and fear him.

His daughter Gilda runs to meet him, and inside the house he forgets his fear and depression. Gilda begs him to tell her about her mother, but he will say only that she loved him despite his deformity. Knowing that the Duke’s friends will punish him if they can, he orders Gilda never to go out alone. While he is repeating his warning to Gilda’s minder, Giovanna, he thinks he hears a noise in the street and rushes outside to investigate. The Duke, who has been waiting outside, immediately slips into the courtyard, bribes Giovanna and hides. Rigoletto comes back, and the Duke is amazed to find that Gilda is the hunchback’s daughter.

Rigoletto leaves, and Gilda confesses that she loves the young man who has been following her. The Duke steps out, saying that he is a student called Gualtier Maldè and that he loves her. Their duet is interrupted when Gilda hears footsteps in the street and thinks it is her father. She makes the Duke leave and floats off to bed, rapturously repeating ‘Gaultier Maldè’.

The footsteps in the street belong to the Duke’s friends, who have found the house and are plotting to abduct Rigolett’s supposed lover. When the hunchback comes back they blindfold him, pretending that they are kidnapping Ceprano’s wife, and trick him into helping them to capture his own daughter. They kidnap Gilda, and Rigoletto tears off the blindfold and discovers how he has been deceived. Gild is gone.

ACT ll
The Palace

The Duke is angry and fearful: he has been back to Rigoletto’s house and found it deserted. He is sure that Gilda has been kidnapped, and for the first time his emotions are aroused as well as his carnal appetite. His friends come to tell him how they have tricked the hunchback, and the Duke realizes that Rigoletto’s ‘lover’ is Gilda and that they have abducted her and brought her to his palace. He rushes away to find her.

Rigoletto comes in, frantic with grief and searching desperately for his daughter. The Duke’s friends will not help him, and suddenly he realized that Gilda must be with the Duke.

In despair and rage he turns on them. He curses and pleads with them by turns, and reveals that the girl that they thought was lover is really his daughter. Gilda returns. Rigoletto is ready to believe it was all a harmless joke, but Gilda’s distress is too deep. He sends the others away, and his daughter’s story convinces him that the Duke has raped her. But she is still desperately in love with the Duke.

Monterone passes on his way to prison, and says bitterly that his curse has not worked since the Duke is still alive and happy. Rigoletto undertakes to avenge them both, though Gilda implores him to be merciful.

ACT lll
Sparafucile’s inn

Rigoletto and Gilda are peering through a hole in the wall of the ramshackle building. The hunchback has brought Gilda here to witness the Duke making love to Maddalena, Sparafucile’s sister and the bait he uses to entice his victims to this lonely spot. Rigoletto wants to reveal the Duke’s true nature to the still-loving Gilda.
The Duke is dressed as a soldier for this sexual adventure, and Gilda watches in horror as he seduces Maddalena. Sparafucile asks Rigoletto whether the Duke is to live or die. Later, replies Rigoletto, and he sends Gilda away to dress as a man and go to Verona to wait for him. Rigeletto and Sparafucile strike their bargain. Rigoletto arranges to collect the body at midnight.

But Maddalena has fallen for the sexy man upstairs in her bed. Why not kill the hunchback instead, she asks. Sparafucile is outraged by his wayward sister, and while the two of them are arguing Gilda returns to the inn and overhears them. Sparafucile will kill him instead of the soldier.

As an act of desperation Gilda decides to commit suicide by giving her life for the Duke’s. She knocks at the door, Maddalena extinguishes the light, and Sparafucile kills her as she enters the bar.

Rigoletto comes back, and Sparafucile gives him a sack that he says contains the Duke’s body. Rigoletto gloats for a while over his sinister treasure. But just has he is about to push it into the river he hears the Duke singing his song about fickle women. Appalled, tears open the sack and finds his daughter. She is still alive. Asking him to bless her and forgive the Duke, she dies.