Rigoletto

I'm not a big opera fan. However, I'm blessed by having a friend who works for a university and gets a few free tickets to cultural events. Last Friday night some of her friends (including me) got to go to the opera Rigoletto. I was highly entertained. The voices were lovely and the story was classic. I laughed to myself since it wasn't supposed to be funny. It was supposed to be tragic.

Get this, though. The young girl who was the lead was seduced by a womanizing duke. Of course, how he did it was to tell her how lovely she was, that she was the love of his life, that he would never be able to love anyone else, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. She fell head over heels. Later she catches him with another woman. This woman, by the way, tells him he's full of it; that she doesn't believe a word he says. She still hits the sack with him.

In the meantime, the young girl's father is really mad about the duke's seducing his daughter and puts out a hit on the duke. The young girl finds out about it and dresses like the duke so that the assassin will kill her instead - which is what happens. Tragic. Well, my thought was that even way back then when the opera was written, us women were still falling for the bulls**t of men. Tragic is right. No wonder we get no respect. Time for us to wake up and shape up, I think.