Francesco Maria Piave (1810–1876)

This story of true love and family conflict is set to magnificent melodies and waltzes by Verdi. The story is an attack on conventional bourgeois morality, arguing that a good heart is more important than propriety, that the social distinctions which split high society from the world of illicit sex are cruel and hypocritical, and that true love must triumph over all. La Traviata's intent scrutiny of a woman whose sexual employment and cultural identity have been conflated, focuses on the show more prostitute as a means to interrogate contemporary society's fraught treatment of the commercial. It is also a story of parental control and possessiveness that results in tragedy for the younger generation, a portrait of family enmeshment, and it’s final resolution, through disaster, in some understanding , reconciliation, and repentance. show less

Short and melodramatic: drama among upper-class twits that is almost definitional in its opera-ness

Probably the nicest part of this set is the 2-CD presentation of the opera, featuring Beverly Sills and all the arias occasionally cut in live performance. Also, there are biographies of Sills, Verdi, and others along with a synopsis and full, annotated libretto.

Wikipedia: "Rigoletto is an opera in three acts[a] by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the 1832 play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. Despite serious initial problems with the Austrian censors who had control over northern Italian theatres at the time, the opera had a triumphant premiere at La Fenice in Venice on 11 March 1851."