Rigoletto tells the story of the crippled court jester Rigoletto and his adored daughter Gilda, whom he desperately tries to protect from the advances of the pleasure-loving Duke of Mantua. While Gilda naïvely gives credence to the Duke's amorous advances, he is concerned only with constantly changing erotic relationships, of which he boasts in his famous aria Questa o quella. Rigoletto fails. A terrible curse uttered against him by Count Monterone, whom he had once ridiculed before the entire court, comes true: at the end he holds his beloved daughter dead in his arms.