In which of Verdi’s operas is the aria known as “La donna è mobile” (“The woman is fickle”)?

Giuseppe Verdi, in full Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi, (born October 9/10, 1813, Roncole, near Busseto, duchy of Parma —died January 27, 1901, Milan, Italy), was a leading Italian composer of opera in the 19th century.

The aria “La donna è mobile” is part of “Rigoletto”, opera in three acts that premiered at La Fenice Opera House in Venice on March 11, 1851. Based closely on the controversial 1832 play “Le Roi s’amuse” (“The King Amuses Himself”; also performed in English as “The King’s Fool”) by Victor Hugo, Verdi’s opera was nearly kept off the stage by censors. The play had premiered in 1832 but was banned after only one performance when the French government, horrified by its disrespectful portrayal of a monarch, declared it immoral.

Verdi had agreed in 1850 to write an opera for La Fenice in Venice, where Piave, one of his favorite librettists, was the resident poet. The composer, librettist, and theatre management were aware that getting the libretto through the censorship process could be a challenge. They changed the lecherous and debauched king to a duke, transposed the setting to Italy, and made adjustments to decrease some of the more shocking aspects of the violent story. As Verdi had wished, however, the duke’s antagonist remained a cruel hunchbacked jester.

The opera’s best-known aria is “La donna è mobile,” in which the womanizing Duke of Mantua muses upon the fickleness of women.