ully for the life of her handsome lover,
but Sparafucile is a man of honour, and will not break his contract with
the jester. Rigoletto has paid for a body, and a body he must have.
However, he consents, should any stranger visit the inn that night, to
kill him in the Duke's place. Gilda, who is waiting in the street, hears
this and makes up her mind to die instead of her lover. She enters the
house, and is promptly murdered by Sparafucile. Her body, sewn up in a
sack, is handed over at the appointed hour to Rigoletto. The jester, in
triumph, is about to hurl the body into the river, when he hears the
Duke singing in the distance. Overcome by a horrible suspicion, he opens
the sack and is confronted by the body of his daughter.

The music of 'Rigoletto' is on a very different plane from that of
'Ernani.' Verdi had become uneasy in the fetters of the
cavatina-cabaletta tradition--the slow movement followed by the
quick--which, since the day of Rossini, had ruled Italian opera with a
rod of iron. In 'Rigoletto,' although the old convention still survives,
the composer shows a keen aspiration after a less trammelled method of
expressing himself. Rigoletto's great monologue is a piece of
declamation pure and simple, and as such struck a note till then
unheard in Italy. The whole of the last act is a brilliant example of
Verdi's picturesque power, combined with acute power of
characterisation. The Duke's gay and lightsome _canzone_, the
magnificent quartet, in which the different passions of four personages
are contrasted and combined with such consummate art, and the sombre
terrors of the tempest, touch a level of art which Verdi had not till
then attained, nor was to reach again until the days of 'Aida,' twenty
years later.

'Il Trovatore' (1853) is melodrama run mad. The plot is terribly
confused, and much of it borders on the incomprehensible, but the
outline of it is as follows. The mother of Azucena, a gipsy, has been
burnt as a witch by order of the Count di Luna. In revenge Azucena
steals one of his children, whom she brings up as her own son under the
name of Manrico. Manrico loves Leonora, a lady of the Spanish Court, who
is also beloved by his brother, the younger Count di Luna. After various
incidents Manrico falls into the Count's hands, and is condemned to
death. Leonora offers her hand as the price of his release, which the
Count accepts. Manrico refuses liberty on these terms, and Leonora takes
poison to es