As one can imagine, many critics have lamented the fact that Verdi ‘did not give us his Lear’; they tumble over one another to conjecture its possible form, convinced that ‘it would have been his masterpiece’. It is one of those simple pseudo-problems which captivated the mediocrities of nineteenth-century criticism, and was made even more attractive because, in spite of never bringing the piece to fruition, Verdi intended to make use of so many smaller themes in the play to which he was drawn. As far as the Fool is concerned, and Verdi's interest in the possibilities of expressing that character's relationship with Lear, even though we have mentioned that Rigoletto is a completely different case, the composer did depict his views through the worldly, yet in its way light and fantastic relationship between Riccardo and Oscar in Un hallo in maschera.

But from this great, never fully grasped myth, Rigoletto takes the secondary theme of a daughter regained and then lost. After the failure of the King Lear project, Rigoletto marks a new stage in our discussion of Verdi.

With Rigoletto (begun in April 1850 at the invitation of La Fenice, Venice) begins the period in which the essential points of the reader's dialogue with Verdi are well known: everything attempted up to now has rather resembled an act of excavation; something more experimental than really critical, something which, as well as revealing treasures, has also brought to light material justifiably buried.