IMAGINARY INTERVIEW WITH MONSIEUR TRIBOULET – JESTER TO KING FRANCIS I

By Jeff Counts

Research into the source material for RIGOLETTO led me on a relatively uneventful journey. It’s a straight-line road with only a single possible destination— Victor Hugo and his tragic 1832 play Le roi s’amuse. Verdi and his librettist Francesco Maria Piave created such a respectfully faithful operatic recreation of Hugo’s drama in 1851, the parallels, scene to scene and character to character, are essentially one to one and require no special insight to identify. I read through the entire Hugo text anyhow, just to be sure, and right away understood Verdi’s attraction to the antiheroic court jester at the heart of the tale. Verdi considered Triboulet a “creation worthy of Shakespeare” but judiciously renamed him Rigoletto (based on the French rigoler—to laugh) to throw off any Italian censors who might have heard troubling things about Hugo’s play.

With Le roi s’amuse still running through my mind, I listened immediately to the fantastic music of the RIGOLETTO and, as I followed along with the libretto, my mind kept going back to Triboulet. Not Hugo’s character but the actual historical figure he was based on, the true headwaters of the inspiration for both the playwright and the composer. The sad life of the flesh-and-blood Triboulet (Nicolas Ferrial was his given name) among the nobility of 15th/16th century France must have been a constant whiplash between laughter and scorn. His job, such as it was, included general entertainment, some occasional palace intrigue and, when the courtiers’ whims dictated, provisional and all-too brief membership in the privileged class. He was perfect for it, built for it in fact. His rapier wit made them howl. His finesse in the arts of foul play made him indispensable during political bouts. But his unfortunate physical deformities required them to keep him at arm’s length. He was their fool, their hilarious, spiteful, hunchbacked fool. Never more.

I had so many questions for him, this Nicolas Ferrial. What does it cost a person to suffer such disdain, to know that your actions might eventually make you worthy of it, and to do it all while attempting to

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