As with Luisa Miller, so, too, with Rigoletto: Verdi's urge to strengthen the opera's drama through a more flexible musical structure than then was common, in some part, delayed popular acceptance. For though today Rigoletto in the United States is one of his most popular works—in 125 years at the Metropolitan Opera, 1883–2008, among his works it ranked third (see appendix E)—it has not always stood so high. Indeed, despite quick success in most countries, in the United States, except in New Orleans, it won favor only slowly, hampered in part by its musical structure and by its initial poor production, but most of all by rumors of an immoral plot. In a review following the premiere, on February 19, 1855, at New York's Academy of Music, according to the influential Albion, a weekly journal of “arts and literature”: “Rumours prejudicial to the morals of Rigoletto had been most freely circulated throughout the city, inducing many who would otherwise gladly have heard the new opera, to bide their time until the press should have pronounced its dictum upon the nature of the plot.”

But after the premiere, staged by a New York Italian company managed and conducted by Max Maretzek, the press spoke with divided voice. The critic for the Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer pronounced, “The opera Rigoletto is, to say the least, not one of Verdi's best”; and after a second performance he added, “Rigoletto should be withdrawn at once.” Yet the critic for the Times, on a second hearing, concluded, “The opera improves on acquaintance, and will bear repetition.” While the critic for the Albion, after a third hearing, pled, “We freely confess that we had not heard enough of Rigoletto in three nights, and we are sure that we are uttering the sentiments of many who have seen it more than once. It is too good an Opera to be shelved so soon.”

In Italy, after the opera's premiere on March 11, 1851, at the Teatro la Fenice, Venice, some censors, critics, and audiences had protested the opera's lack of morality—an innocent seduced and raped by a lecher, whose life she preserves by substituting for him in her father's plot to kill him—and for a time some cities forced changes on the libretto.