As I said in April four years ago:

Even though I was born and reared in Cork, a very musical city, I was never really an opera person.
Thanks to the pioneering spirits of Aloys Fleischmann and Joan Denise Moriarty the arts of classical music and dance were well catered for in Cork with institutions like the Cork Orchestral Society and the Cork Ballet Company.
On the Opera front however things were not so impressive.
We were fed large quantities of various light operas, there was always a good house for Merry Widows, Student Princes and anything by Gilbert and Sullivan. To lower the brow a little musicals comedies, especially those by Rogers and Hammerstein were always popular and much loved (by me too, I must say.)
I do remember a terrific production of Traviata in the Palace Theatre and there were, I am sure some others, but, on the whole I think Opera was the poor relation of the performing arts in Cork. Consequently I was fairly ignorant of, and imagined I would be bored by Opera.
My first contact with opera, as an adult, which began to break down this apathetic disinterest, was with Ingmar Bergman’s production of Mozart’s Magic Flute which and I saw on the television on RTE 1 in the late Seventies.
This fabulous production made me a fan, but only of this particular opera.
My relationship with opera has followed a pattern since of really having to listen many times to an opera before the familiarity breeds respect.
I now have a repertoire of probably only six that I truly like but look forward, with much anticipation , to getting to know some others.

So on to Rigoletto.
The French version of Lyric FM is Classique and we have taken to having that on in the car as we drive around and it was on this that we heard Callas singing the aria Gaultier Malde from Rigoletto.
It is beautiful.
We were both just struck dumb and I determined that a copy of same I just had to have.
Amazon France furnished us with a second hand copy (another advantage of living in France is that cds or books -even from English companies- are way cheaper or often post free sent to our address in France. I never realised just how much broader the Irish Sea was than the Channel) and I have been playing it incessantly ever since.
It is incredible music now I want a production please.
Anyone know of one coming up?